I currently own a small airline on Tempelhof.
I interline with a few large airliens, and the interlining fees are HUGE. They are a huge part of my budget, but they bring in a lot of pax so it's worth it I think.
But what I find unrealistic about this, is the employee list. I have a whopping 650 Network Planners employed. That is almost as much as [b] ALL OTHER EMPLOYEES OF MY AIRLINE COMBINED[/B]. Including flight attendants.
How is that realistic? Does AS take place in a world without computers/the internet, where every possible route would have to calculated by hand? Why would I need such a disproportionate amount of people to 'plan my network'? I find it unrealistic.
My suggestion is to overhaul this system and people can talk about that here :)
Its the "cost" of interline. Yes, in spite of computers, a lot, but a LOT of work in airlines is done manually - dispatch, filing rates, inventory management, etc.
From today's CrankyFlier: "probably due to manual intervention from an analyst – more than 2/3 of flights are handled this way at United"
But is it realistic to have half ot the entire workforce of an airline work on interlining?
I think it'd be more realistic to base the interlining cost on the actual amount of transferring pax. This dat a is already readily available when booking ORS. Why not just pay a rate per transferring passenger? I don't think it would be hard to program.
That way it's also easier for smaller airlines to get interlines with the big guys. En enormous airlines will be less likely to interline with each other due to the increasing costs (bigger airlines and more hubs = more transfers). This will increase competition where partners are selected very carefully.
Large airlines are actually more likely to Interline with each other as the current cost is not very high. It is relatively more expensive for a smaller airline to Interline with a large airline than for two large airlines to Interline together.