Plane ticket on Orbitz for Lufthansa, but later found United Airlines?

October 3, 2017 7:03 AM

I bought an online plane ticket for Lufthansa on Orbitz. However, the day before my trip when I tried to check in, it was actually through United Airlines. I got a confirmation email from Lufthansa and then had to call them directly to figure out why I couldn't do an online check in. They had to tell me over the phone the United Airlines Flight Number and confirmation number. Then I called Orbitz to figure out what was going on, they had to look into it and then e-mail me an updated itinerary with United Airlines. I feel a bit dismayed since the reason I bought this ticket was to avoid United Airlines after their fiasco of pulling off a plane passenger and because I wanted to try Lufthansa airlines. Can someone explain to me what happened? I bought this ticket with the intention of trying Lufthansa. I don't know who to ask really for this type of question.
posted by proficiency101 to Travel & Transportation (9 answers total)

That just sounds like a totally normal code share to me.
posted by lollusc at 7:06 AM on October 3, 2017 [21 favorites]

Airlines might advertise a leg of a trip or sell you a leg of a trip, but it's actually via one of their partner carriers. This is a little stealthier when it's a regional one from a smaller city to a hub because it's a subsidiary or branded partner, but for international carriers, it's typical that in-country connecting flights are done via a local partner.

A list of Lufthansa's "member airlines" confirms that United is their US partner.
posted by mikeh at 7:08 AM on October 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

(Most commonly you can still check in online with the airline who sold a ticket even if the flight is operated by another one, but sometimes you can't. That's often the first indication I get that a flight is going to be operated by someone else: that I can't check in online.)
posted by lollusc at 7:09 AM on October 3, 2017

Here's a more detailed explanation: Understanding Codeshare Flights.

There are a lot of ways to tell you're booking a codeshare, but aside from it actually saying "Lufthansa operated by United" (sometimes this is more obvious than others) often the most obvious is that it's just not a route that you would expect the airline to be flying. Like, if you're booking a flight from Boston to Orlando, that's not going to be on Lufthansa, no matter where you buy the ticket.
posted by mskyle at 7:10 AM on October 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

When you booked the flight, there was probably some very small text somewhere under the Lufthansa flight information that said, "Operated by United Airlines." This is a very common arrangement between US airlines flying to international destinations.

Orbitz and Expedia and similar third party sites are very bad at communicating this sort of thing. It's always better to buy airline tickets directly from the airlines. You can use Orbitz to see what the good deals are, but then head over to the airline's website to do the ticket purchasing. In this case, the flight would still have been operated by United Airlines, but Lufthansa's website might have made that clearer for you at the time of purchase.
posted by something something at 7:10 AM on October 3, 2017 [8 favorites]

Lufthansa and United are "partners" in what's called the Star Alliance who will often codeshare fights - meaning you might buy a ticket with one airline's name but it is "operated by" a different airline. There was probably some small print on Orbitz when you purchased that said that. Basically, there's no funny business here, just standard airline flight naming and selling.
posted by brainmouse at 7:12 AM on October 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Agreed with other folks - thanks to codeshare, who your ticket is officially purchased from doesn't always have much bearing on which airline actually operates the flight. I had several work related trips over the last couple years from DC to Brussels, and at various points I had an Air Brussels ticket operated by United as well as vice versa as well as sometimes an Air Brussels ticket for an Air Brussels flight - both airlines operate flights on that route, and they codeshare, so while I could find out after getting my ticket whether I was actually on the Air Brussels-operated flight or not (which greatly affected the movie options if not much else), who my office's travel agent happened to book me through wasn't the way to do that. It might still be worth complaining to Orbitz because it does affect which airline gets your money (I imagine) but it has no bearing on your desire to try Lufthansa - you're either on one of their flights, or you're on a United flight, whichever ticket you have.
posted by solotoro at 7:18 AM on October 3, 2017

Online travel agents aren't the best at disclosing things to people who don't know the lingo. "Operated by United Airlines" was certainly shown to you but not necessarily in a way that got your attention. (Another giveaway is very high flight numbers ... most flights with a 4xxx or higher flight number are going to be codeshares operated by another carrier.) Another trap for the unwary has become the extreme disparity between quality of seats and service which are grouped together as premium economy ... can be a big comfortable arm-chair with nice recline and foot rests on one airlines, and a typical narrow coach seat with limited recline and a bit more leg room on another.
posted by MattD at 7:40 AM on October 3, 2017

Sounds totally normal to me. This is especially true if you're flying between the US and Europe and either your US origin isn't served by Lufthansa or your European destination isn't served by United. For example I once flew the following:
- San Francisco-Dallas on United;
- Dallas-Frankfurt-Prague on Lufthansa;
- Prague-Frankfurt-Washington-San Francisco, with the first two legs on Lufthansa and the last leg on United.
In these situations intra-Europe legs will be served by Lufthansa and intra-US legs by United; either airline could be flying the transatlantic leg.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:54 AM on October 3, 2017 [1 favorite]