Trouble Brewing Within Airline Travel Reservation System

In recent weeks, travel industry experts have watched developments following an unprecedented move by American Airlines as they pulled away from Orbitz. As a result, travel itineraries and flight listings were pulled from their online reservation system (as well as Expedia’s) as the airline attempts to draw customers directly to them.

By doing this it will avoid fees to the global distribution systems, but the move has caused much debate and even legal battles between various parties as the effects ripple through the industries.

This course of action was sparked after American Airlines demanded that Orbitz implement a reservation system which was different to that used by the majority of travel agents who use it to compare flight details from operators. When Orbitz declined, American retaliated by withdrawing its flight information from the company.

Expedia, seemingly to the defence of Orbitz and the position the site had been put in, removed American from its own site. Sabre (the system used by most travel sites and agents) responded by lowering American’s standing in the listings and claimed they would be dropped altogether in the Summer of this year.

The end result? Travel agents in the States will have no easy way of automatically comparing and searching for American Airline’s flight listings and fares. For consumers, this could translate to an increase in prices as the process takes longer for the arranging parties, and this will only get worse if more airlines pull out or a dropped from the centralized system as agents will have to manually compare fares.

In a similar move, Delta have also stopped providing flight listings to CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com and BookIt.com and the dropping of some five other high-profile flight booking sites has been planned.

Reported by Sam Doving.

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