Codeshare agreement

• published: 07 Oct 2014
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A codeshare agreement, sometimes simply codeshare, is an aviation business arrangement where two or more airlines share the same flight. (Sharing in this sense means that each airline publish and market the flight under its own airline designator and flight number as part of its published time table/schedule.) A seat can be purchased on each airline's designator and flight number, but is actually operated by only one of these cooperating airlines, commonly called the operating carrier or more precisely (and in line with definitions in IATA Standard Schedules Information Manual): "Administrating carrier". The term "code" refers to the identifier used in flight schedule, generally the two-character IATA airline designator code and flight number. Thus, XX123 (flight number 123 operated by the airline XX), might also be sold by airline YY as YY456 and by ZZ as ZZ9876. Airlines YY and ZZ are in this case called "Marketing airlines" (sometimes abbreviated MKT CXR for "marketing carrier"). Most of the major airlines today have code sharing partnerships with other airlines, and code sharing is a key feature of the major airline alliances. Typically, code-sharing agreements are also a part of the commercial agreements between airlines in the same airline alliances. Under a code sharing agreement, the airline that administrates the flight (the one holding the operational permissions, airport slots and planning/controlling the flight and responsible for the ground handling services) is commonly called the operating carrier, often abbreviated OPE CXR, even though ths IATA SSIM term "Administrating carrier" is actually more precise. The reason for this is that a third carrier is actually involved, typically in the case that the airline originally planning to operate the flight needs to hire a subcontractor to operate the flight on their behalf (typically a wet lease, meaning an aircraft is leased with crew and all facilities to fly, commonly due to capacity limitations, technical problems etc.) In this case, the airline actually carrying the passenger should be designated the operating carrier, since it is the one actually carrying the passengers/cargo. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons image source in video