American Airlines Feels Vindicated in Its Second Try at Direct Distribution

In July, Cory Garner, American Airlines vice president of sales and distribution strategy, said he would take a retirement buyout. But in a surprise turnabout on Monday, Garner said that he had had a change of heart. He will stay on, continuing to lead his unit's 140 employees. The news is a fine excuse to pause to consider what American has done since 2010 in pursuing next-generation retailing. The company has led the airline industry's quest to provide content to desktop reservation systems that enables travel agents to more easily explain to customers how the carrier's products differ from those of rivals based on quality rather than price. Garner has played an outsized role as the point person for American's effort to adopt new technologies and fresh compensation models in its dealings with agencies and travel management companies. To be sure, Garner and American were not the only players in the long-running and on-going drama. Several industry names from the past, such as Montie Brewer, the CEO Air Canada from 2004 to 2009, played pivotal roles. Today, several industry figures, such as Tye Radcliffe, director of distribution at United, and Xavier Lagardère, Lufthansa Group's senior director in charge of distribution, are pushing for additional change. But Garner was the man in the limelight in September 2010, when American announced its effort to launch what it called a "direct connect," which it claimed was a first for U.S. airlines. “The Direct Connect will ultimately serve as the single point of access for all American fares and optional services by the outside world, whether that be travel agencies, GDSs (global distribution systems), or any other technology company,” Garner said at the time, according to reporter Dennis Schaal. Garner looks back at himself as having been a "naïve boy" at the time in the sense he "had no idea what would come next." American's direct connect strategy ran into a blizzard of opposition from irritated global distribution systems and confused travel management companies. American's direct-connect effort was presented by some as an effort to bypass the three largest travel technology middlemen that airlines typically used for distributing airfare content — Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. Those companies fanned the flames of concerns raised by travel agencies. They labeled direct connect as the enemy of transparency, meaning it would hinder price comparison by agents and consumers beca