Airline code-sharing foils accurate on-time reporting
Another Air Travel Consumer Report. Another opportunity to confuse — if not deceive — the American public.
Yes, deceive. The government produces all of its monthly reports based on the carrier that actually operated the flight. I’m an industry veteran; that makes sense to me. But it hardly makes sense to the average customer.
In this day and age of code-sharing and subcontracting certain services to commuter partners through marketing agreements, just because you buy a ticket through a particular airline, doesn’t mean you’ll actually fly on a plane operated by that company.
According to its Web site, there are several different regional airlines that comprise the US Airways Express network. They aren’t alone. United Airlines has a lot, too. So does Delta Air Lines.
So how is the Transportation Department’s report deceptive?
Mesa Airlines had one of the highest percentages of flights canceled in April. OK, the report says American had the highest, but I’m going to give them a break because of all of those MD-80 maintenance cancellations. That horse has been ridden to death.
Just who or what is Mesa? Good question.
Mesa operates as, well, Mesa on some of its routes. According to its Web site’s route map (circa 2005, maybe they should update it), Mesa-Mesa, I’ll call it, serves small cities like Hobbs and Carlsbad, NM, Hot Springs, Ark, and Brookings, SD with “Essential Air Service.”
Essential Air Service is a government-subsidized air service program to ensure airline service to smaller communities.
In other words, Mesa gets paid by taxpayers to fly to many of these smaller cities.
Mesa also operates as Delta Connection, United Express, US Airways Express and go! (an inter-island service in Hawaii).
Except that at Delta, Mesa is called Freedom Airlines for some reason, so that further confuses things for the customer.
The only real way the customer can tell if he or she is about to wind up on a Mesa (or is it Freedom, or is it Mesa-Mesa?) flight through one of the “big” airlines is to look closely during the Internet flight selection process on each major airline’s Web site, or to listen carefully to the reservations agent.
Airlines are required to disclose this information to the customer, or they are subject to hefty government-imposed fines. The success of that disclosure, though, depends on the attentiveness of the disclosee.
Each Web site does it differently, so pay attention.
Some “old school” reservations agents will try to get away with simply saying a generic “XYZ Express” (the term “commuter” has such a negative connotation to the marketing folks that it’s out of vogue, so they make their people say “Express” or “Connection” to describe these partners). If they try to do that to you, make them tell you the specific name of the airline – they are required to give it and you shouldn’t have to ask.
Confused yet? This whole code-share thing feels like a marketing flimflam to me.
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No one is intentionally deceiving the public as you make it seem.
Freedom operates under that name instead of Mesa because it has a different operating certificate. Pilot contracts stipulate certain things that would make Mesa unable to do business with Delta otherwise. Same thing with Trans States and GoJet; same company, different operating certificates.
The whole code-sharing deal is necessary for industry. Not even close to a marketing flimflam.