Kayak countersues American Airlines in fare display dispute
Now it’s Kayak’s turn. The online travel site, which is being sued by American Airlines for displaying its fares, has countersued the company in Tarrant County, Texas.
In case you haven’t been following the story, here’s what you need to know. American Airlines requested that Kayak and Sidestep (now owned by Kayak) only display links to aa.com — and nowhere else. In other words, they don’t want shoppers to be routed to competing sites Orbitz and Cheaptickets.
Kayak said it would not comply with American’s demand and continued to display fares from Orbitz and Cheaptickets. Eventually Kayak decided to remove the aa.com listings and replace them with a ‘request info’ button. However, each side later claims that it was the one that terminated the relationship.
In early August, American sued Kayak because the airline claimed it “owned” its fares and should control how its product is displayed.
On August 29, in the answer portion mentioned above, Kayak says that it has no bias. It searches fares from hundreds of travel sites around the world and displays them for the consumers and it does not sell travel products “nor does it filter or suppress search results.” Kayak sends the consumers “to the chosen provider’s website to make the purchase.”
In the complaint portion of the countersuit, Kayak states that American sent emails to customers who previously purchased tickets through Kayak, erroneously stating that American was the one that terminated the relationship rather than “disclosing the fact that Kayak terminated the relationship because of American’s demand for incomplete, and therefore biased, search results.”
It also claims that American Airlines misled consumers by showing a false statement that by displaying fares from Orbitz, Kayak was forcing “American to pay a ‘double tax,’ once to Kayak and once to Orbitz.” This false statement resulted in complaints to Kayak from consumers who said they will take their business elsewhere. Because of this “Kayak has suffered damage to the goodwill Kayak had built with these customers and damage to Kayak’s potential business relationship with these customers.”
Because of the false statements and potential damage, Kayak is suing American for exemplary, or punitive, damages as well as dismissal of American’s lawsuit. No dollar amount was stated in the countersuit.
You can download the entire counterclaim in PDF format here.
I guess we’ll have to “leave it to the judge,” though we don’t know if the decision will lead to further lawsuits. Stay tuned.
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