Hi everyone,
I need some help in understanding how to besti utilise and use interlining.
How do you know if an interlining proposal is a good one?
How do you know, after you’ve signed a contract, if it is profitable or not?
Is it good and a must to have flight to the interlining company’s country?
In general are there any strategy points to follow?
Many thanks in advance,
Costas
A proposal is in most cases a good one as long as the network of your airline and the network of the partner complement each other.
I see the costs of ILs as "advertising" and the aim to get market-entry for my passengers into important markets.
You don’t need to have own flights to the hub of your partner-airline as long as you partner flies to your hub 
Personally I always try to connect my hob with the (or one) hub of my partner to enable swift connections.
Hopefully other members have better strategies
Regards
Try to limit your IL partners to regional airlines…i would assume that you want to do international flights? that way…you can be 100% the airline won’t fly potentially the same routes as you…
Take a look at stats like: how big they are…what position are they in the HUB…check what position they are in the country…it should give you an idea of how great you passengers will be served 
What gets forgotten is the cost of interlinining.
Assumed I am a small carrier, just operating a few routes. Now if an interline with a big airline costs me 50’000$ a week, but I have only one flight to his hub with a Dash 8-400, I would need thousands of additional passengers a week just to make up the costs of the interline, so in the end this whole interline - even if it adds transfer passengers - ends up losing money.
So as a small airline, make sure the "big interlines" are worth the money!
well if it will cost you 50k$ per week…i don’t think you want to keep your daily flight but increase it…because a cost that huge means theres tons of possible transfer pax…!
IL with regional airlines is the most profitable…unless you are in a place as far as Kenya and don’t have the cash to buy big planes so you IL with a european partner who flys to your hub…
I think the OP should provide us with some more info about his/her strategy to determine what would be best for IL…other then that…all options are possible
[left]Also very interesting topic.[/left]
[left]I think … Interlining in AS performs unclear, doubtful function. Interline agreement – it’s agreement of mutual acceptance transportation documents (first, airtickets). [/left]
For example, the passenger who has a ticket, issued by British Airways, accepted Aeroflot for any flights. In this case British Airways - is the seller (agent), and Aeroflot pay commission for British as agent (usually 3-5% from fare). While Aeroflot in own account to considers commission (as the recurrent expences). At the same time, for the British Airways 3-5%% - is others income/revenue from sales. It’s all. No more. Why in AS players do need additional staff for interline service - is not clear. What the method is used to calculate the cost of the Interline agreement - is not clear too. Today 99.9% Airlines use the electronic tickets. Processing of sales (the financial report for whole month) – it’s takes 5 seconds)) Specialist need to load data on PC from Billing System and press button. It’s finished, not cost any more!
[left]Years practical experience shows, that Interline agreements between Airlines doesn’t add more passengers, and not increase pax traffic. But a long time ago (when Airlines use paper tickets) Interline agreement was comfortable for the passengers - in this case tickets are issued on one paper physical blank for flights two (or more) different Airlines. Today all tickets is electronic, and passengers doesn’t feels nothing.[/left]
However, interline agreements are still being used any Arilines. Why? Because Airlines setting a special through/transfers fares for flights to each other (within own routes networks). But in AS the system of through fares is not present yet, and interline play a decorative, abstract role. I hope that AS will improve, and after a few years the economic model will be perfect and detailed. )
I think in your rush to talk about how real-life interlining works you’ve maybe misunderstood how it actually works in-game - with an agreement in place passengers can connect between any flights of the carriers in question; because traffic is calculated on an airport/destination basis this can potentially lead to very large traffic increases (or none at all - depending on whether any new connections actually allow passenger X to get from airport A to airport B . Absent any other means of integrating networks they can be extremely important - completely the opposite of ‘decorative’ (though ‘abstract’ is pretty accurate, since it’s an all-or-nothing setting). Single fares aren’t technically a thing we have, but in practice the division of money that stems from a passenger going, say, JFK-LHR on one carrier and then LHR-AMS on another works ok for that.
So, to answer the initial question…
1 - if you’re having to ask that question, obviously you don’t . Think about what the flights you’re connecting with get you - if you’re in, say, Athens, and you’re linking up with a carrier that flies from your base to, say, Madrid, but doesn’t really go anywhere from there that you can’t fly to yourself, then there may not be much point - you can do that yourself pretty easily. If you’re linking up with a carrier that flies from your base to, I dunno, Kabul, but which goes beyond that to a bunch of destinations you don’t (Beijing? Delhi? Chengdu?) then it may be to your advantage; if the carrier you’re linking up with arrives and departs half an hour either side of 2am there may not be much point if your fleet all works 9am-9pm etc. There are no hard rules - you have to think about what you’re getting.
2 - You don’t, initially. You can see in aggregate how much traffic at a particular office is coming to you off flights not operated by you (‘external’ in the top right ‘connection statistics’ box on the office page). If it’s a simple thing - one valid connection per day, or something like that - then you can eyeball it (as in, you’re never going to get more than the other guy’s capacity per day off his network, so multiply that number by your average fare out of wherever and that’s your ceiling for that location - if it’s less than the cost of the contract, then it won’t be profitable until some factors change). As the complexity of the networks increases, the difficulty of quantifying the value of a relationship increases. Real airlines employ accountants to do these things, of course - after a while you get a sense of what’ll pay and what won’t.
3 - Again, there are no definitive answers. If the other guy already has 100 flights a day to your base, then it may not matter. Then again - if he’s got 100 flights a day to your base, then you kinda have to wonder why he wants a relationship…
[left]))) These rules too difficult and is not clear.[/left]
First, to evaluate the effectiveness of any interline agreement (the efficiency of the Airline-partner), user needs to have the data tickets it sold. The user must have a registry of sales. Without the ticket sales registry and strong statistical evaluation of cooperation impossible. Am I wrong?
[left]For grade simulations need interaction between the passenger and Reservation System. It’s simple. Passenger visits any booking web-site and Reservation system (or GDS - Global Distribution System) automatically creates offers of anyone route: direct flights or flights, which including one or more stops/stopovers. It’s the standard algorithm of any Reservation System.
For example: the passenger need fly from Moscow to Caracas. No direct flights between this two cities. Reservation system offers passengers the flight via London-Heathrow by two different carriers: Transaero Airlines (Moscow-London) and British Airways (London-Caracas). Reservation system doesn’t check the interline agreements between Airlines. Passenger’s not interested this agreement too. Reserv. system checks MCT (Minimum Connect Time only). Passenger interest suitable option of flights (minimum stops and minimum travel time, low fares etc). Why should invent something that doesn’t happen? Interlining - is this not the way to increase pax flow. Interline - is the method settlement for tickets sales between different Airlines.
Another thing, if we talks about code-share agreement. Code-sharing system really increase pax. traffic within the route networks of different Airlines, but in this case Airline should make purchase the capacity partially on each other’s flights (block of seats - flexible or strong-fixed).[/left]
Another interesting question)))
We are also beginning this way, when we developing the pax-flow-model for Training Aviation Center. This is the mistake. The demand must based calculated on flows (round trip/one way) between the cities / agglomerations only, but not it between airports. If passengers "bind" to an airports, the model doesn’t work properly. This is my personal experience. )))