Airline actions are hard to fathom. The latest tiff between American Airlines and Kayak.com is mystifying. AA is pulling its directly-bookable fares leaving buyers the option of only purchasing through agencies that cost AA more in booking costs. Very strange.
AA demanded that all AA flights listed on kayak.com be linked directly to AA.com rather than allow passengers to purchase through Orbitz, Cheaptickets.com and others. Kayak.com refused and AA decided to pull their fares from the metasearch engine. Now, kayak.com will still list AA flights, but all will be routed through online travel agencies rather than having an option allowing direct booking.
Passengers will save the minimal cheapticket.com and orbitz.com booking fees by making reservations and purchasing tickets directly with AA, but that will now require an additional step and won’t be seamless.
This is the ultimate case of “if you won’t play with my toys the way I want you to, I’m taking them home.” Of course AA is getting their way, but now they have one fewer friend to play with.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
AA is becoming the airline everyone loves to hate, but has to deal with.
I just booked a round trip ticket on AA from BOS to DFW for October. I guess in between when I started looking last week and when I booked yesterday, AA raised their fares $25. It really hurt buying these tickets, but since I am meeting people in DFW where we are splitting a rental car and therefore also had to try to coordinate return flights, I had to do it.
I would have saved almost $100 if I flew Southwest from Manchester to Love field, including a hotel room in Manchester the night before as the flight out was going to be at 6:15am.
What pitiful post – based on total misinformation!
OK, George…so what is the correct information. If you only lodge a protest without adding proof you just look like an idiot. Or an AA executive.