MilesBuzz! - Southwest sues Orbitz

"Southwest Airlines filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court in California against Orbitz. "Most observers believe that the airline industry needs to be more competitive. Orbitz is a step in the wrong direction," said Southwest general counsel James Parker".
http://38.144.115.20/travel/index.asp?news=15544&src=nwsltr

Believe this was on May 3rd! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

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http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum94/HTML/000805.html

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It seems like Southwest is the one being anti-competitive in this case. Orbitz gives them free space to show their fares and directs customers to Southwest's website. More importantly, customers can compare all airline fares in an unbiased manner. IS SW just worried that it won't always be the lowest fare?

The problem is Southwest won't let anyone else book a reservation on them ... no online travel agency can see into their computers (Southwest recently cancelled Travelocity's agreement).

I think the problem is that Orbitz really wants to be able to say they compare flights on *all* carriers, but Southest makes it difficult for them to do that, so they are doing the best they can to include Southwest.

Southwest does not show inventory becuase the CRS system charges them to do so. Lower overhead (no meals/seat reservations/transfer bags to other airlines) allows them to offer lower airfares. There is a reason why Southwest is the only airline to post a profit for every year the past 30 years.

Originally posted by Tango:
Southwest does not show inventory becuase the CRS system charges them to do so. Lower overhead (no meals/seat reservations/transfer bags to other airlines) allows them to offer lower airfares. There is a reason why Southwest is the only airline to post a profit for every year the past 30 years.

I don't know the details of the SW/Travelocity arrangement ... did SW have to pay Travelocity? I kind of doubt it ...

Fact of the matter is this is just Southwest's attempt to block Orbitz. Southwest said negotiations took place before the lawsuit, and I can't imagine Orbitz did not offer to link it SW's own CRS for free ... but I could be wrong. Like I said, Orbitz really wants to be able to say it shows *every* airline ... and it would probably be willing to jump through a few hoops to get Southwest on there ...

Southwest did not pay for travelocity to list its flights and the system was never a live system. Passengers would book on travelocity and travelocity would forward the booking to Southwest. Most of the time it worked but there were times the seat inventory sold out before travelocity forwarded the information to Southwest to process. The result was passenger showing up at the gate with a "confirmed" ticket and there being no space on the flight.

Southwest ended their relationship with Orbitz becuase of unhappy customers holding invalid tickets.

Southwest uses Sabre to process all of their internal operations. Becuase Sabre charges more to show seat avaialbity in the CRS systems, Southwest does not fully participate. Orbitz system uses other CRS systems and direct access into some of the member airlines computer systems. The added cost for Southwest to allow Orbitz to gain access into their system would drive up their overhead cost.

The main reason why Southwest sued Orbitz was due to faulty information being shown on the Orbitz sight.

If Travelocity could not create a workable system with Southwest, I doubt Orbitz would be able to do any better.

Southwest also has the strongest web site bookings of all of the airlines. They want to conentrate on growing this even more since this is the cheapest way to sell tickets (why do you think they offer double rapid rewards for internet bookings?). There would be very little incentive to have Orbitz sell tickets for Southwest.