This last week, the travel world has been ablaze with the tribulations of JetBlue. Why couldn't they just put the customers on another airline?
Quite often when cancellations happen on airlines such as United and Continental, they will try to get their inconvenienced customers out on the next available flight, even if it's another airline. So you would think that would be the logical choice for JetBlue to do, with its current storm-related cancellations.
The problem with that is JetBlue, being an independent discount airline, does not have any codeshare agreements with anyone.
Codesharing is the agreement between airlines that they can book their customers on each other's flights and it'll basically all come out when the books are balanced (ok, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea).
So while Continental could book me on a Northwest flight, instead of their own, JetBlue has no other airline that it has partnered with to codeshare a flight. And they're not alone. Other discounters, such as Southwest Airlines, also operate without codeshare agreements.
Does this mean you should never fly a discount airline because they don't codeshare? Not at all. Just keep in mind that should the rare incident happen, such as the recent JetBlue tribulations, you're pretty much stuck with your discount airline. They aren't going to be able to miraculously shift you over to another airline.
