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American Airlines convinced a Texas state district judge Monday to issue a temporary restraining order to make Sabre begin displaying American's fares and flights on an equal footing with other airlines.
This is the latest battle in the war over who provides flight, fare and travel information to travel agencies and travel buyers -- the owners of global distribution systems like Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport or the airlines themselves.
American filed a suit Monday in state district court in Tarrant County that says American is being harmed by Sabre's decision last Wednesday to make it much harder to find American's flights and fares on travel agency computer displays.
In its suit, American said it was seeking to "stop wrongful and unjustified retaliation that threatens to seriously disrupt American's business and harm members of the public and travel industry.
"Defendants hope to coerce American into abandoning its effort to modernize and streamline the costly legacy system for distributing American's travel data - a system dfrom which defendants make significant profits and hope to prolong as long as they can," the airline said.
American said Sabre's action is causing "bias" that "is irreparably and unfairly harming American's business and reputation by eliminating countless sales that American would have earned and by misleading the public into believeing that American's services either no longer exist or are not competitive with options offered by competing air carriers. To prevent this immediate and irreparable harm,"
Sabre's decision to raise booking fees on domestic and international flights will cost American $157 million annual, American said.
Here's Sabre's statement from spokeswoman Nancy St. Pierre:
"Sabre is confident that our actions are well within our contractual rights, and we will aggressively defend against American Airlines' baseless claims to the contrary. 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,"
American in an affidavit broke down where its passenger sales come from. If you're interested, keep reading.
Passenger revenues for 12 months ended Nov. 30, in millions of dollars
| Seller | Total | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| American, from own website, airport agents or phone | $6,781 | 35.8% |
| Sabre GDS from affected geographical areas * | $6,162 | 32.5% |
| Expedia sites that currently don't display American's fares | $1,022 | 5.4% |
| Orbitz sites that currently don't display American's fares | $592 | 3.1% |
| Travelport's GDS from affected geographical areas | $341 | 1.8% |
| Sabre GDS from geographical areas not affected | $320 | 1.7% |
| Travelport GDS from geographical areas not affected | $2,051 | 10.8% |
| Amadeus GDS from geographical areas not affected | $1,230 | 6.5% |
| Indirect sources other than above | $446 | 2.4% |
| Total | $18,946 |
* excluding Sabre sales attributable to Expedia and Orbitz
SOURCE: American Airlines lawsuit
