Articles tagged “lawsuits”

A federal judge heard closing arguments in the U.S. government's antitrust suit to block Sabre's acquisition of Farelogix. Inside the courtroom, Judge Leonard Stark's comments didn't show his hand. The case seems a close call.

It's notable that we had a much easier time finding experts who supported Sabre's proposed merger of Farelogix than opponents. But this court case will be decided on legal nuances, and its outcome is impossible to predict. We pity the judge who has to endure this crash course in airline technology and distribution.

Bulletproof legal immunity for "platforms" like TripAdvisor seems to have softened in recent years. What's certain is that as tours and activities go more mainstream as an option on booking sites, intermediaries will have to put more effort into vetting the tour operators.

Screen-scraping lawsuits are as old as the internet. We don't know if any money changed hands when Ryanair and Expedia settled lawsuits in the United States and Ireland, but what seems apparent is that Ryanair flights have gone missing on Expedia websites. Case(s) closed.

Sabre had tried the unorthodox legal tactic of pursuing its $360 million acquisition of Farelogix, an airline tech vendor, without waiting for approval from U.S. antitrust watchdogs. But it apparently didn't count on federal attorneys claiming they have text messages between Sabre executives acknowledging the anti-competitive nature of the deal.

Many grandmothers have tighter password security than tech vendor [24]7.ai allegedly did. A hacker had an easy time accessing the vendor's code, and through it, the payment card data of up to 825,000 Delta customers. No wonder the airline is suing.

Resort fees are embedded into many hotels' business models, so it would take a lot to upend them. But the prospect is picking up a lot of momentum.

Honesty is the best policy. Even if it clashes with a nice FareHarbor bootstrapping story that seemed too good to be true.

It is relatively rare that contract disputes between online travel agencies and airlines reach the public domain unless they are at a breaking point. We'll undoubtedly hear more about this soon.

There's no guarantee that the European Commission will act on this complaint but it shows that the online travel industry is still very annoyed with Lufthansa's actions.