bocastephen

Either they litigate, or they will soon be out of business - their choice. I do question the the claim that DL owns the data provided to a GDS and can restrict how it is distributed. They could simply relocate their systems and incorporate offshore using a foreign registered agent to stand between the named principals and any angry airline - that would force the airline to go after Travelport or Sabre to cut off their access, and open up a larger can of worms.

As a TA, I can quote availability, seat maps and other GDS-origin data without restriction as a normal course of doing business with my customers. DL cannot instruct me that I may not tell my customers what availability exists in specific fare buckets, or what seats appear open (ok, they can instruct me, but I can also tell them to F themselves).

Perhaps a legal angle for EF to consider is a reinvention as an online travel agency.

mherdeg

Ugh, if I am reading the DL complaint correctly ( http://media.jrn.com/documents/deltaclassaction.pdf ), it is complaining that on certain routes (say JFK-ATL-SEA) DL publishes T inventory JFK-ATL and T inventory ATL-SEA but no married-segment T inventory JFK-ATL-SEA. That's baffling. That's like filing a lawsuit against a boutique law firm because they say their junior partners cost $800/hour but you've seen the paystubs and they're making more like $200/hour.

This is not, like, some grand conspiracy — this is a standard airline-industry practice that carriers use to set prices for journeys in markets using the tools they have available (fare buckets, fares, and married segments). If they weren't using antiquated decades-old fare bucket technology, this lawsuit would make no sense. This practice is not some dark industry secret — try reading the Lufthansa rules for travel agents some time and you'll see that they say they will publish debit memos for travel agents who force individual-segment inventory to break married-segment restrictions!!

Now, there is an airline whose Web site allows you to "force" individual-segment inventory while using a married-segment fare — it's united.com, and sbm12 has written a blog post complaining about how the practice allows clever people to avoid married-segment logic (although IIRC the blog post in question calls the practice intentional and a deliberately deceptive business practice). I wonder whether there is a class-action lawsuit coming there, too?

(The LH language for anyone who's curious, from http://www.lufthansa-usa.com/downloa...N-20121109.pdf ::
)

I can't see why a frivolous lawsuit over this standard industry practice would lead ExpertFlyer to do anything in response except maybe force customers to agree to a wacky disclaimer like the united.com expert mode disclaimer that customers routinely ignore.

TomA

Of course that means United will do it next, since they are now on autopilot to automatically follow everything Delta does on a time delay.

I don't know why United even bothers to cut a check to the senior management team. It's the corporate equivalent of an index stock now. Let the mail room manage the company with the guideline, "Just do whatever Delta does."

dmurphynj

Not to be a Pollyanna, but I don't think this is something United would do.

They've been more transparent with information than ANY other airline - think of things like "Where is this plane coming from?"

Or the ability to see seat maps in real time right up until the doors close?

Or online SDC?

Things that we take for granted haven't been available from Delta, well, ever. That's a BIG differentiator for United and something that I think is core to their way of doing business.

Why would that change just because Delta is retracting even further into their turtle shell?

Madone59

Thank you for the update ^

LETTERBOY

Actually, if they may be out of business even if they do litigate. I'd bet DL has more legal resources and more money than EF does. What good would (potential) a legal victory do them if the company isn't around to see it?

And that assumes they win. DL can't possibly be dumb enough to do this without their lawyers signing off.

Ari

You can file it as an exhibit. You can file it in a file drawer. So there is "such a thing". It just isn't what the poster meant. The poster meant "sent".

javabytes

Despite the fact that all the legacy airlines are a bunch of lemmings, I doubt UA will follow, at least immediately. UA offers its own ExpertMode with the kind of data that DL just demanded be yanked from EF. DL has never done and will never do such a thing, because that would only serve to inform its customers.

I view this as laying the groundwork for opaque, targeted pricing. The only universe in which that works is if your customers don't know how badly they're being taken for a ride, which of course means depriving them of as much information as possible. UA may get there eventually but until then I don't foresee any knee jerk reactions to the latest dose of "honesty, integrity, and mutual respect".

whlinder

Explain how data is not ownable.

FlyinHawaiian

Given the above and that other posts seem less about United and MileagePlus and more about Delta and SkyMiles, I will close this thread for now, pending any new developments that are UA-related.

FlyinHawaiian, Co-Moderator
United MileagePlus Forum