Domestic codesharing practices in the US airline industry

This paper documents some stylized facts about domestic codesharing practices in the US airline industry. It is demonstrated that unlike international codesharing, the majority of domestic codeshare tickets do not combine the networks of two carriers. Rather, most codeshare tickets between major US carriers are virtual in nature, whereby one carrier sells tickets on flights operated entirely by another carrier. Moreover, we show that the price of these virtual tickets are, on average, less than those operated and marketed by a single carrier.