American Wins Court Order Blocking Sabre Move to Drop Fares

American Airlines has won a court restraining order that temporarily blocks Sabre’s move to drop the carrier’s fares on Sabre displays. American said in its filing that Sabre’s move “violates agreements between American and Sabre and harms American, the travel agent community, and the traveling public.”

For its part, Sabre said that it expects to overturn the Texas court decision Sabre had “de-preferenced” its display of American’s fares as part of an ongoing dispute between the GDSs, online travel agencies and airlines over the future of airline distribution. After the court order, Sabre said that it is confident that its actions were “well within our contractual rights.”

The GDS said it will fight what it called American’s “baseless claims” about its contract with Sabre. “We are confident that the court will affirm Sabre’s contractual right to protect our customers’ interests and support airlines that value transparent and efficient comparison shopping,” said Nancy St. Pierre, a Sabre spokeswoman.

The dispute between American and Sabre is the latest salvo over the future of airline distribution. Some airlines, with American leading the way, say that they want to have their own “direct connect” fare display system. American is trying to shift to such a direct connect model, in which agencies and corporate customers connect directly to American rather than going through the GDSs. American says direct connects facilitate traveler-authenticated-marketing.

American and other airlines want to take their menu of services and offer what they think fits the customer best based on what they know about that customer. The airlines say the GDSs can’t do such marketing as well as they can on their own, but the GDSs dispute that.

Travel agents, for their part, say the technology to directly connect with hundreds of airlines individually would be too costly and simply isn’t feasible at this time. For their part, American and other airlines also don’t want to pay what they say are costly GDS fees or fees to online travel agencies like Orbitz and Expedia.

The issue is an ongoing one but became public when American, apparently using the online agency Orbitz as a pawn in its dispute with the GDS Travelport, which owns 49 percent of Orbitz, pulled out of Orbitz. Expedia dropped American and Sabre then “de-preferenced” its display of American’s fares and took steps toward pulling the airline from its content altogether.