Delta Fares

can u identify the problems and give solution to this? can reservation sys. be unfair?

American airlines and United Airlines developed reservation systems used by their own ticketing agents and by travel agents in booking flights. When a customer calls to book a flight, the agent enters information into a computer concerning the date and time of flights required. The system displays the flights that meet these criteria, and the agent presents the choices to the customer. In 1984, several of their competitors sued American and United, claiming that these reservation systems constituted unfair competition. The competitors claimed that American and United charged excessive fees for including competing airlines flights in the system. Also, they asserted that American and United limited competitor’s participation and displayed competitors’ flight after displaying their own. Not surprisingly, busy travel agents were more likely to book these flights instead of looking further for flights on the other airlines that might be as good or better for customers. American and United countered that their use of these systems was not unfair competition. Rather, they had decided to invest in these systems many years earlier, and after years of work were now enjoying the fruit of these investments. That same year, American and United agreed to discontinue preferential treatment for their own flights in screen displays used by travel agents.

Public Comments

1. The problem seems to be that the non-included airlines want a piece of the action. Seriously, the airline industry has a 'general' reservation system that has access to all airlines both local and international. What american and united did was probably to develop their own system in parallel and give the agents incentives to use it more than the general system. The agents, though, still have the general system and can opt to choose that over the new one since the 'general' one would give the customer the better schedule for flights -- or at least would let the customer be the one to choose. I doubt the system itself is unfair unless american and united combined have a majority in the bookings of local or int'l flights. Additional incentives given to agents for using the system, however, might be. Or, at the very least, might be considered unethical. Considering, however, that the other airlines could always do the same thing and increase incentives, American and United probably pulled the plug for fear of triggering a price war. I doubt they'd be fearful of an unfair practice suit -- but a price war could bring them down faster than you could say 'southwest'.
2. The system does not seem unfair to me. Just because a travel agent is too lazy to do their job properly is not the fault of the airlines. Many companies use joint systems to streamline costs and avoid duplicating systems. These things obviously cost a lot of money to produce and for both airlines to do it alone may not have been done by either. Remember, too, that this is 1984: Ronald Reagan, big hair and this brand-new thing called a "cell-phone" that was as big and clumsy as the entire telephone book. Now, people can basically be their own travel agent via the Internet. Something similar to that situation now would be using Google and since Google gets paid more by American Airlines, they list their sites first. Is it "unfair" that the user can't scroll down and look for another airline? No, I don't think so. It is just lazy. Before, users got screwed by lazy travel agents. Now they screw themselves by not taking the time to do their own research properly.