ijgordon

Who is servicing these itineraries booked direct on AA.com and “fed back” to the CTA? Do the travelers have to call the airline directly to make changes or deal with IRROPS??

bocastephen

The ticket is owned, issued and serviced by AA - the travel agent will need to call AA sAAleslink to get a soon-to-be-very-annoyed agent who will be tasked with transferring the call to pricing, who will then spend an endless amount of time figuring out the new fare, who will then refuse to reissue the ticket, but send the TA into the reservations queue for the customer's status rank, if any, who will then reissue the ticket.

This is how it works today when the ticket is partially flown and the GDS can't handle the reprice and reissue....but going forward it will be for every AA ticket issued in this system regardless of coupon status.

seawolf

I call AA. The ticket is not issued on agency stock.

ijgordon

Yeah, won’t really work for most employees, especially if they don’t have status.

seawolf

I don’t see why not considering general public is able to travel/change without 3rd party agencies involve. Stats quoted up thread from ASTA/ARC is 40% of tickets are issued by travel agencies.

IME Holistically most trips don’t require changes in advance. Infrequent flyers tend to attend conferences where plans don’t really change. It will be outright cancel for credit.

Our sales/consultants have last minute changes and likely have status (with status I preferred to deal with airline than corp travel).

Even when I was previously flying enough for EXP the number of times I had to change in advance are rare. Number of times I actually called corp travel for change can be counted on one hand in past 10 years. More frequent are changes to earlier /standby or IROPs which took place at gate/lounge/airline call center.

SNA_Flyer

I just did some random searches in Concur for typical routes that I fly. It is now pricing many AA flights higher that aa.com. Which in almost every instance now triggers airfare violation rules based on competitive fares, if I were to select the AA fare. In almost every instance, United and Delta are less now, where it was always pretty competitive before.

If this doesn't get resolved soon, my days flying AA for work are done - there is no way I could continue justify the rule violations. I guess I need to start doing some research to see if United or Delta is the way to go.

I guess people at AA don't understand the concept of unintended consequences.

bocastephen

I believe they do, and yet do not care. They will just toss this mess in the air and let the travel agents, TMCs and customers sort out how they want to deal with it. It was most certainly deliberate.

Dave Noble

The airline is probably well aware of the potential issues - it may well have calculated that any impact is offset by the benefits to it

Now that the issue has been forced, the holdout agencies may well adapt as needed to be able to sell the fares. A short term impact to some flyers may well be acceptable

If required to use an agancy that will not sell acceptable AA fares, then use another airline - until that airline takes a similar stance

I suspect that agencies will be more likely to adapt

bocastephen

I suspect that many agencies, like ours, will move customers to DL and UA and away from AA unless a client specifically asks to fly AA. Many of our clients have employees with no airline preference, they just want to get from A to B and least miserable way possible, so we will just book away from AA where another lower priced option exists. We are certainly not going to be the only agency doing so.

seawolf

They do understand and essentially drew a lane in the sand. It would appear AA has started to implement NDC back in 2013 and making some progress by 2017.

https://airlines.iata.org/analysis/n...ross-the-globe

https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-...C-breakthrough

We're now around the 10 year mark. There is no way this takes a decade to implement if all parties are on-board. XML-based messaging has been around since prior to 2000.

Seems to me airlines exert limited control over GDS. As such GDS either had no incentive or quietly slow-walking adoption to drag it out. In such a environment, NDC would never be adopted without disincentive if incentives weren't working.

I described back in post #12 comparing US EMV credit card vs. DHS Real ID adoption. At some point you just have to bring out the stick if the carrot is not working.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35109081-post12.html

MathMusic

At least short term looks like I can book the B6 codeshares at competitive prices for my current routes, but the AA flight numbers are definately showing as higher in Concur for me as well. Long term, who knows I might take a status match offer for DL or UA especially if I time it right for after July 1.

Dave Noble

Or maybe the agency will accept being dragged into the new regime. I would aso suspect that agencies that are known not to have access to the best fares will become a less preferred choice for use as an agency

If it doesn't make a difference to an agency, then no reason to be concerned whether it is a problem to any specific airline

ijgordon

Well I'm going to disagree with you about the need for changes and agency service, and we are NOT going to have high-paid employees wait on hold for agents. Can we have their administrative assistants do that? Perhaps, but that's also not really a good use of their time. I suspect booking another airline is the path of least resistance for the time being.

TBD

AA knows what they're doing.
But so do UA and DL. They're betting that corporate travelers will do what ijgordon says above.

Time will tell - either AA is right and the others move. Or AA loses sufficient market share and reverses course.

seawolf

+1

It’s like DL tying status to minimum spend and introducing dynamic award charts. Not only did they not lose customers, the rest of the industry eventually followed.

Holistically, travel agents are essentially personal assistants for those that don't want to deal with the airline directly. Many airlines including AA have call back feature and some changes can be performed via Twitter/chat etc.

What exactly is the travel agent concern here? They didn’t have time to adopt or not willing to adopt? If it is the former then it would appear travel agencies known for years this was coming. What is the hold up?

If they are not willing to adopt then AA and other airlines are essentially just taking another step (eg e-tickets/online) at taking travel agencies out of the equation. Historically >80-90% of tickets were sold by agencies.

The gap I see right now is corporate travel may not be able to compare/enforce corporate policy on AA (and others such as UA/DL) corporate fares booked directly on airline website vs. rest of airlines not offering such "book direct" alternative. But eventually I think software like Concur is going to native integrate and be able to enforce policy even when booking directly with airline. That would just be another proverbial nail in the coffin for travel agents if they do not adopt.

Taking a step back, what do corporate travel agencies do that cannot be replicated by another party/tool like Concur? Keep in mind that Concur is not own by agencies/GDS. It's a 3rd party software by SAP.

• Be able to make new/changes instead of airline (eg essentially personal assistant)
• Track tickets usage (unused tickets)
• Track overall spend for future negotiation (can be done on expense reimbursement side of T&E).
• Track employee location (someone mentioned duty of care earlier)
• Enforce corporate policy (done by Concur)

The track ticket usage across airlines is probably the only piece I think there is no good alternative available. However if airlines open up access to Concur, that potentially could also making agency obsolete.