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Codesharing is fraud. It gives no benefit to
travellers or consumers. Airlines lie about this,
but they've had "interline" agreements in place for
years that allow them to offer through fares,
through ticketing, through baggage checking, and
frequent flyer mileage credits between airlines
completely independently of which airlines' codes
are placed on the flight.

I disagree, codesharing can be of great benefit to travellers and
fraud is a pretty harsh word.. A year ago, I was scheduled on CO from
LGW-EWR-MCO. The LGW-EWR segment on CO was cancelled due to weather
in EWR. Because CO codeshares with VS, they were able to put me on
the CO coded VS operated LGW-MCO flight.

They could have done this even without the code-sharing arrangement. CO and
VS have interline agreements by which VS will honor a CO ticket (and v.v.)
even without the codesharing agreement.

This may be true. However, the CO check-in agent was not the sharpest
tool in the shed, and I had to suggest to her to put us on the MCO-LGW
flight. She originally suggested LGW-IAH-MCO for me. However, since
I saw "VS 027/CO 8247" at the Virgin check-in counter and knew about
CO and VS codesharing, I knew I had a better option. If they only had
the interline agreement and no codeshares, it would not have been as
obvious that I could have taken the VS flight. Ironically, the agent
commented that my suggestion was great, and she hadn't thought of
that.


No actual airline service or benefit to travellers
is actually dependant to the slightest degree on
cadesharing. Codesharing is done for the sole
purpose of misleading consumers about which airline
operates the flight, which destinations the airline
"serves", how many flights they actually operate to
those places, and what services and amenities will
be available on those flights.

Wrong again. Last week I flew MCO-ATL-FCO-NAP on all DL coded flights
with the FCO-NAP segment operated by AZ. Since the flight had a DL
code rather than an AZ code, I was able to earn more miles for my DL
skymiles account. DL gives a 50% bonus for flights in Y fare and AZ
does not.

That's a function of the frequent flyer tie-in between DL and AZ rather than
anything else. I can get Northwest miles with my Delta or Continental
frequent flyer membership, and get the bonus miles too, whether or not the
flight is a code share.

Yes and no. I can certainly earn DL miles on DL and any of their
partners. However, DL gives a 50% class of service mileage bonus when
booked in coach classes Y, B, and M of a DL coded flight. Refer to
http://www.delta.com/skymiles/getmil...iles/index.jsp and
http://www.delta.com/skymiles/getmil...ners/index.jsp My
ticket was a Y fare with all DL flight numbers. I could have paid the
same for the ticket and had the AZ segment, with an AZ flight number,
and still earned DL miles. However, I would not have gotten the 50%
mileage bonus for the AZ flights. While in this case it was only a
250 mile difference, I have been in on a Y fare on AZ metal with a DL
flight number from MIA-MXP. In that case, I would have lost out on
almost 2500 miles.

The point that I am making with that example is that the codeshare in
that case benefits me despite what the OP thinks.

Also, you cannot get NW miles with DL or CO FF membership. I think
you meant you can earn NW miles when flying NW, CO and DL (among
others). Any Worldperks bonus you get is per NW rules.
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