Direct channels help airlines save significant commissions by skipping intermediaries like GDS (Global Distribution System) and online travel agencies.
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Sabre is the largest GDS and includes the website Travelocity, is owned by private equity companies Silver Lake and TPG.
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American said continues to have discussions with other GDS companies with the intent of distributing its content through these systems under competitive terms.
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Now the airline is actively marketing its own content system to partners in providing comparison shopping services to customers, cutting out the GDS systems entirely.
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This is because they want to reach high-value business flyers, who often make bookings through corporate travel agents which, in turn, use a GDS to compile their itineraries.
When American pulled its listings from the online travel site Orbitz in December over a charge dispute, it was directed at the charges it had to pay for the data that currently come from a GDS system.
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Many online travel agencies have come to resemble physical ones, signing up with a GDS which provides a reservations system and other computing power while handing them a commission (ultimately paid by the airlines) on every booking.
The Fort-Worth based airline filed a lawsuit in Texas State court in Tarrant County Jan. 10 against Sabre, the travel network that operates one of the global distribution systems (GDS) that American has claimed is a costly way to continue doing business.
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American contested in a Fort Worth court in April that Travelport presents a civil antitrust threat to airlines that prefer to directly send its flight information to websites through its own technology, rather than go through a GDS, which aggregates flight data from many air carriers in exchange for regular fees from the airlines.
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