European Regulators Will Focus on Distributors' Restrictive Airline Contracts

European Commission antitrust regulators left an array of unanswered questions when they opened an investigation into the business practices of airline distribution-tech providers Amadeus and Sabre. But one thing we do know is that investigators have asked Amadeus and Sabre preliminary questions about their so-called "full content" clauses, which require airlines to share virtually all of their flight information and fares with the global distribution system in question. However, there have been a variety of loopholes, too, so the notion of full content is somewhat of a misnomer. The tech giants typically coupled that contract language with a parity provision that requires the airlines to offer all of their fares at equivalent prices and comparable volumes of inventory as the airlines distribute elsewhere, with no extra fees. At issue is whether the practice of preventing airlines from saving some of their offers for exclusive distribution outside of Amadeus and Sabre — such as through an airline’s own website or an upstart rival tech provider — discourages other tech companies from offering competitive services. Full content clauses are one element in the contracts between distribution tech providers Amadeus and Sabre on the one hand, and airlines and travel agents on the other, that  European antitrust investigators will check to see if they restrict competition in breach of European Union antitrust rules. In December 2016, American Airlines won a U.S. trial against Sabre in which a jury deemed some Sabre's business practices, including the full-content provisions that were renewed in 2011, to have been anti-competitive. Sabre is appealing the decision, which would require it to pay the airline $1