Sabre was created by AA. Today Travelocity is Sabre Holdings owned by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group. I don't recognize either of those as airlines.
Orbitz began life as a joint venture of AA, CO, DL, NW and UA. Today it is a public company, and I do not know if any of these airlines still own substantial interests.
In any event I missed the explanation of why ownership by airlines would make the affliated credit card a bad deal.
The Title of this thread is What Credit Card should make a comeback?. It's specifically about cards which are no longer offered. The details of the recently withdrawn Travelocity Mastercard program are known.
I took the liberty of making the additional point that even the watered down forthcoming American Express version is better than the Orbitz card. I regret the confusion.
A zillion cc's on the market today and every business is fighting for competition and advertisers will market as appropriately. Sorta like russian roulette.
Pick and choose.