Will the American Airlines ruling force the parties to sit down and talk it out?
Skift Take
Sabre and Travelport clearly have used their market power to stymie American Airlines. It would be interesting to find out from the courts how they ultimately view the antitrust allegations -- but the parties could settle long before that happens.
A federal judge's ruling allowing an American Airlines antitrust suit against Sabre, Travelport, and Orbitz Worldwide to proceed could provide some impetus for the parties to finally sit down and conduct some serious negotiations.
Without ruling on the veracity of the claims, the judge decided that if the airline's allegations were true, then they could be sufficient to support claims of conspiracy and monopoly.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="350"] An American Airlines 767 on the tarmac. Photo by Simon Clancy.[/caption]
"... American has alleged sufficient facts sufficient to support a reasonable inference that Sabre, Travelport, Orbitz and other industry participants engaged in a combination or conspiracy to preserve the GDS model and exclude AA Direct Connect from the market and submarkets," opined judge Terry Means in U.S. District Court, Fort Worth, Texas.
High-stakes poker
American Airlines calculates that Sabre processes 60% of all airline tickets sold through U.S. travel agencies, and that Travelport handles 30%.
By urging travel agencies and corporations to get their flight data directly from American Air
