Most airlines today choose to make web fares available only on their own websites, because these fares anchorage are so low it would be uneconomic to offer them through the higher cost channels. (It is, in fact, very common throughout the retailing world for stores or catalogs to also have a website, and for that website to offer a few prices that are below the prices charged for the same goods in the store or the hotel catalog.) However whether an airline chooses to make its web fares available through CRS''s to travel agents and the websites that anchorage rely on CRS''s is strictly an individual airline decision, and will remain so once Orbitz is up and running. Several third party websites (such as intellitrip.com) today take web fares from various airline websites (which they can do, because nothing is more public than a website) and display them in one place for their customers. hotel And of course travel agents can book web fares off an airline''s website for a customer if they wish (although whether they get a commission on that booking is up to the individual anchorage airline).

Serious mischaracterizations hotel have been made about us and the issue of who will have access to what fares. Some of those mischaracterizations have been based on simple ignorance, but others have clearly anchorage been part of a concerted effort hotel by us competitors to use misinformation to prevent us from offering new competition to them and new choice to consumers. There is no agreement by which any airline would be precluded from making any fare it chose available through any retail channel it chose. Airlines for 2 decades have been like any other business anchorage in America, in that they can decide what they want to charge and where they want to sell their product. And that remains true under the our agreements. Each and every airline, no matter what kind of hotel participation it has, will be free to decide individually anchorage what fares it offers hotel and whether or not to offer them through any other outlet.

It is absolutely clear anchorage that airlines hotel and anchorage and hotel do not have the ability to drive consumers to channels which the airlines, rather than consumers, prefer. If one or more airlines attempted to do so, the others would increase their market share by appealing to those same consumers through the channel those consumers prefer. No airline can afford to turn its back on any subgroup of consumers. No airline can afford anchorage to be anything other than as competitive and as attractive as it can possibly be through each channel to the consumers that prefer that channel. This is a reality that grows ultimately out of the fact that the airline business is a very low margin business - any airline that lost even hotel a small group of passengers would be at risk of swinging from profitable to money-losing in an instant. Airlines scrap for every last passenger because they have to.

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