Most airlines today choose to make web fares available only Turbeville on their own websites, because these fares 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 Days charged for the same goods in the store or the catalog.) However whether an airline chooses to make its web fares available through CRS''s to travel agents and the Inn websites that rely on CRS''s Turbeville is strictly an individual airline decision, and will remain Days 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. And of course Inn travel agents can book web fares off an airline''s website Turbeville for a customer if they wish (although whether they get a commission on that booking is up to the individual airline).

It is absolutely clear that airlines do Days not have the ability to drive consumers to channels which the airlines, rather than consumers, prefer. If one or more airlines attempted to Inn and Turbeville do so, the others would Days increase their Inn market share by appealing Turbeville to those same consumers through the channel those consumers prefer. No airline can afford Days to turn its back on any subgroup of consumers. No airline can afford 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 Inn business is a very low margin business - any airline that lost even 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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