Let me try to explain how the system works and why Southwest is upset with Orbitz.

Most airlines have contracts with the CRS systems to show fare/schedule information and to allow bookings to be made. The CRS systems charge the airlines a fee for each segement reserved/booked on their systems. Up until recently there was no away around the CRS systems/fee's and still maintain a large exposure to travel agents and the flying public. As the CRS systems continued to raise their booking fees, airlines started to try to find ways to go around the CRS systems. That is one of the main pushes to get people to book on the airlines own web sites--becuase they would save major dollars on booking fees. Orbitz was funded by the airlines in another attempt to get around these fees as Orbitz promises to charge much less per booking in exchange for the airlines provided orbitz with their lowest fares offered on their own internet sites.

Orbitz pulls in information from the CRS systems and what the airlines feed it and puts it through their software to provide customers with flight choices.

Southwest, in not wanting to pay the high CRS fee's has never fully participated in the CRS systems. They have chosen only limited participation with Sabre where Sabre shows scheduled flights and fares but not avalability. When you pull up a Southwest flight on Sabre, you do not get fare/seat class inventory. The only way for a travel agent to book a seat on Southwest is to first call Southwest and reserve the seat you want and then with the confirmation number, go back into the crs system and issue the ticket/reservation. Travelocity tried to sell Southwest for a period but ran into to many problems with ticketed passengers not holding secured reservations. Southwest pulled the plug on this several months ago.

Most travel agents do not like to sell Southwest becuase of the extra work it takes to reserve and issue a ticket. Becuase of this, Southwest has had to rely on its own 800 lines and web site to sell their seats. Southwest sells over 25% of all seats through their own web site--something the other airlines are green with envy.

It looks like Orbitz is not showing accurate flight schedules or fares for southwest on their site--something Southwest wants Orbitz to stop doing becuase it hurts their image. If (as Southwest states) that Orbitz shows no non-stop flights between Palm Beach and Orlando (when Sabre does show 3 daily non-stop flights) then the Orbitz system is not up to speed. Southwest wants Orbitz to stop becuase it is giving out bogus information.

As I stated in my previous post, any other airline would have the same problem if Orbitz showed bogus information on their system.

Anyone who thinks that Southwest is worried about not being seen as the low fare airline (because orbitz would show cheaper flights on other airlines) clearly does not understand what the Southwest effect is. If you know anything about the industry, you would not be making these statements!