ABTN”s monthly industry discourse continues with Eddie Bell chairman of OAG Worldwide, based at the company's headquarters in the UK.
Eddie has more than 30 years' publishing experience, both in the UK and the USA. He has spent 15 years with News Corporation, most recently as executive chairman and publisher at HarperCollins Publishers UK, where he published Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika, Lady Thatcher's Memoirs and John Major's autobiography. He was formerly senior vice-president and publisher of Harper Paperbacks in New York. Prior to this, he was managing director at William Collins & Sons and deputy managing director of Hodder & Stoughton. Since his appointment at OAG in August 2001 he has taken to the travel industry like a duck to water and will once again later this month preside over the OAG awards evening.
”One of the quiet revolutions of air travel over the last 20 years has been the emergence and growth of airline codesharing. Today codeshare seems everywhere and has become an important ingredient in many airlines” network strategies.
Codeshare first appeared in OAG”s systems in 1986. Within 10 years 20% of all our flight records carried codeshare information; today it is around half. In fact today 25% of all flights and 40% of all flight itineraries we hold are marketing not operational schedules. Looking at it another way, over 300 airlines have codeshare relationships ” some with up to 30 partners including rail operators.
In an environment where consolidation options can be restricted, codeshare has offered airlines a practical solution: providing their passengers with a virtual expanded network, enabling valued passengers” needs to be addressed across a broader network. At the same time by sharing physical flights with other carriers, both parties” costs are reduced. Airlines are able to offer their passengers an extended network in a more cost effective manner. So the airline wins and the passengers win.
So why do I hear so many stories from friends and business contacts about that great holiday deal or business flight which was or was almost ruined because they turned up at the wrong terminal to check in and missed or just scrambled onto the flight? Trying to quickly get from one terminal to another at major airports like Heathrow or JFK is no low stress task!
At the simplest level they may have just not understood the system. The flight they were booked on had an airline”s code and they assumed, very reasonably, that that was who they were flying with and had gone, or were taken by the taxi or limo driver, to that carrier”s terminal. After a confused scan of the departure board or a queue at check-in, they realised with growing dread it was another airline that they were flying with and it was leaving from a completely different terminal. A quick dash, or airport bus or train ride, suitcases in hand, across a busy airport to try and make the flight.
More surprisingly the passenger may have actually been sent to the wrong place. They may have gone to the terminal they were asked to, only to find that they had been given incorrect terminal information via their travel agent or on-line booking system. But surely the airlines that operate and market codeshare flights always show the correct information? The last thing an airline needs is to inform its passengers that its flight is leaving at a different time or from a different terminal to its partner.
Unfortunately, matching operating and marketing codeshare flight information is no easy or flawless task. The simple fact is, all too frequently information is different. Well over 25% of all operating and marketing codeshare flights submitted to our system have mismatches. In terms of the nature of the mismatches the highest source of discrepancies relates to terminal or arrival & departure information. A third of these flights have discrepancies on terminal information.
This shows just how big an issue managing codeshare agreements can be. I can only guess at the amount of compensation claims made from passengers who don”t actually make the correct terminal in time; the lost business from those passengers who refuse to travel with either airline again because they have missed a flight, or simply the cost of reuniting passengers and bags which didn”t make the flight.
It”s difficult to co-ordinate 30 partner airlines. We understand the challenge. OAG has been distributing schedules and other critical information for travel planning on behalf of the airlines for over 70 years. We receive data in all kinds of ways from more than 950 airlines worldwide and we verify and augment over 90% of that data before distributing it into the supply chain. That”s what we do, every day. As a result, the airlines are used to, and expect, OAG to run quality checks to help ensure their information is correct when it reaches the market.
OAG understands the challenge. We can identify when airlines with codeshare arrangements are showing different information to enable their two teams to resolve the source of the discrepancy. We can even correct this information against pre-agreed rules. And we do so for a handful of airlines. But for the majority we don”t. In some cases an airline has specifically asked us not to.
Why? It may be because we charge for the service? But at less than $20K pa for a typical medium sized airline ” less than two return, transatlantic, first class fares ” it seems good value. Maybe it”s because the airlines don”t know we can do this? Maybe because of all the complexities of schedules synchronisation across different systems they don”t believe it will really make a difference ” but the airlines who use OAG tools know differently. Maybe it”s because those who have to address the passenger service and cost issues don”t know that there are tools to help? Maybe it”s because airlines have bigger problems?
So there are ways to help get the pure information correct but that”s not the end of the task. It does not address the question of how we help passengers not to get it wrong ” maybe airlines are victims of their own success. Have they done such a good job of presenting a marketing flight as their own that their customers think they actually are? It”s not an easy issue getting the marketing message and the service message aligned but it needs more thought. At OAG we serve not only the industry but the traveller ” we have to find better ways to help our customers get things right. As the ways that we distribute information evolve, this is an issue that”s at the front of our minds.
Codeshare brings mixed blessings. Behind the headline win/win situation there are less visible cost issues for the airlines and service issues for passengers. But it”s no longer a problem without solutions; addressing them is a matter of priority and choice."
Eddie Bell