Determinants of Successful Code-Sharing: A Case Study of Continental and America West Airlines Alliances – A Discrete Longitudinal Analysis

Code-sharing, a phenomenon observed in international airline markets, has emerged as an important form of alliance in the domestic U.S. airline industry. Unlike international markets where code-share agreements were often the only way for a carrier to enter into a route serving another country, the post-1980 U.S. airline industry has enjoyed de facto free entry and exit. However, the financial conditions of the mid-1990s combined with various constraints on airport and airspace capacity led domestic carriers to experiment with code-sharing.