Lufthansa and Sabre Sign a Truce After Long-Running Airline Distribution Tussle

Lufthansa Group and Sabre said on Wednesday they had agreed on high-level principles for a new airline distribution agreement. The public announcement offered few details, but the existence of a deal itself signaled the end of long-running commercial and legal battles between the largest airline group in Germany and the largest travel distribution company in the U.S. The agreement said that agencies in 2021 would be able to access, book, pay for, and edit such offers via Sabre, the first of the global distribution systems to access Lufthansa Group's next-generation content, including so-called continuous pricing. Until now, Lufthansa made its next-generation offers available only to selected partners, such as Concur and Egencia, that agreed to use its preferred technical methods. Agencies saw some different fares and saw those offers displayed differently when connecting via Lufthansa's agency-direct systems instead of through the classic reservation systems of Sabre and its dist