Sabre and American Airlines in Legal Fight

Sabre Holdings has filed an antitrust claim against American Airlines.

Sabre’s antitrust claim asserts that AA is engaging in anticompetitive conduct to maintain what Sabre says is “its monopoly position over air transportation out of its hubs and between many U.S. and Caribbean cities, and to gain a monopoly position in air booking services for travel between those cities.”

Sabre claims AA is unlawfully forcing travel agencies, travel management companies and corporations to take its Direct Connect product in order to access the airline’s full fare information, which constitutes illegal ‘tying’.

Additionally, Sabre asserts that AA is attempting to eliminate the GDSs. It says the airline is doing this by refusing to provide complete fare information to GDSs and by forcing travel agents to use AA’s Direct Connect product instead of GDSs. Through these actions, Sabre says AA is reducing competition for air services and air booking services.

“Sabre welcomes fair, market-based competition. Having failed to gain market acceptance of its Direct Connect product, AA chose to go outside the bounds of fair competition by leveraging its monopoly position and by engaging in tying to try and force travel agencies to take a product they do not want,” said Kroeger. “These actions violate the law and impose substantial harm on our company and the travel agencies, consumers and corporate customers we serve, compelling us to take today’s legal action.”

Sabre’s claim seeks damages and an injunction preventing AA from continuing to force travel agents and other customers to take the airline’s Direct Connect product.

American Airlines’ lawsuit on the other hand, claims that Sabre and Travelport, which combined control around 90% of bookings made by U.S. based travel agencies and dominate an essential link to travel agents and many consumers, continue to engage in anti-competitive conduct to protect their market position from new competition by alternative technologies that are both less expensive and more capable, including aggressively suppressing the ability of travel agents to seek alternative methods to book tickets directly with airlines using direct connections with airlines.

AA’s suit also alleges GDS actions have hurt airline passengers by forcing airlines to seek to charge higher fares to recoup the GDS fees. In addition to requesting injunctive relief from the defendants' actions, American is seeking recovery of unspecified monetary damages.

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