Continental Airline Tickets

Why does Continental as a codeshare JFK-LHR always cost more than Virgin Atlantic?

It's the same exact flight, but Continental routinely charges $100 more. Why would anyone ever buy that ticket when the exact same flight is available through Virgin Atlanic. I'm not talking about different flights, but rather the same exact flight, sold by both VS and CO.

Public Comments

1. The same thing happens all the time on other companies' codeshares; the same exact flight from DC to Orlando is $200 more when purchased from United than when purchased from USAir. And it's not always the company whose plane it is who has the lower price. I think it really depends on when you buy the ticket; each airline will have an allocation of tickets (i.e. a codeshare between UA and US will be split between the two of them so that US could not sell all of the seats) and, just like when the airplane is operated just by one company, the fare goes up as the number of empty seats goes down, I think when one airline's bucket of seats gets smaller, the price gets bigger. So you could check the same flight 5 days later and see that now CO is charging more than VS.
2. Continental has to pay Virgin to put you on that airplane... Usually, its not per passenger, but it covers the cost of the man hours required to keep that codeshare running and the fees of establishing it in the first place...