Plane ticket price madness

"Code sharing" is the selling of one airline company's flights by another airline. The price for the same seat on the same flight can vary drastically. I read about this in Metro (London, 8/12/10). In the article one airline's spokesman said "We always advise customers to shop around for the best fares to suit their needs". Setting aside the odd concept of "needing" to spend more money to get exactly the same thing, this point is also odd as we have an airline effectively marketing other airlines' tickets. Let's not forget in all this oddness that there are of course companies that exist to find the cheapest fares for you. Yes, special websites that uncover information that is already known, but that has been covered, or not shared. Thus a market and competition and jobs are created to achieve nothing.