Travel agencies were told this week by American Airlines that the carrier will do everything it can to issue fares and availability despite its dispute with Sabre.
In a letter from vice president of global sales, Derek DeCross, AA moved to reassure agents that although its agreement with Sabre is due to end at the end of this month, it expects “full content to be available to you in Sabre” after the September 6, “either by commercial agreement ort court-imposed injunction”.
“Should American’s full content amendment expire without a successor, American believes it has a contractual right to continue participating in Sabre, and American would commit to provide you with uninterrupted access to the same full content you receive today without imposing surcharges, while we continue to work toward a revised agreement with Sabre.”
The airline has petitioned the court to prevent Sabre from removing content from the system after the September 6 deadline, it DeCross says.
AA claims agency access to content “could only be disrupted in the scenario in which Sabre elects not to allow American to provide its full content to you, and Sabre is not prevented by the court from taking this action against American”.
The letter continues:
“The time has come for Sabre to speak plainly in its public communications about what it intends to do if there is no successor full content amendment in place with American by September 6.”
Sigh.
I would love to see the CEOs of the TMCs and agencies make the same stand that the CEO of Starbucks made yesterday to the Administration in Washington. His plea was for the powers that be in DC to come up with a balanced budget. His threat was to withhold the contributions to the various political action committees and election campaign funds.
Well, I doubt that anyone is funding Gerard Arpey’s re-election campaign, so that tack won’t work. But seriously, my plea to this industry is to stop the madness and come up with a solution that really works, not one that disrupts the operation of extremely low margin businesses and just passes on fees from the multi-billion dollar companies, down line to the TMCs and travel agencies and their clients. They aggregate business for you. High margin business at that. And oh, did I mention that it is a variable cost channel?
Shifting business to your own websites is not free. Count the costs properly and look at the revenue side of the equation.
Sabre is not the enemy.