... is NW thinking in Japan?
 

For those who've spent time in Japan, travel agents are a big deal there. NW is the only Non-Japanese airline that has any presence in travel agencies. People just don't like to book themselves there. They have a trusted agent make arrangements for them.

How does 'disintermediation' translate to Japanase?

Well if all the other airlines follow suit, then it'll be great....if not, well, they might reinstate it.....happened here in the US not too long ago....

I thought travel agent commissions from airlines were ancient history.

Financial change comes slowly to Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if the other American carriers follow suit, but it would be a bit of a surprise for the the Japanese carriers to do so.

In the US, commissions started going away around 2000. And if I recall correctly (I was working for a travel vendor at the time) Northwest was either the first, or one of the first, to scrap them. (My employers refused to sell Northwest for a few years after that.)

This is presumably just the same thing. Life goes on; agents just tack on a booking fee instead.

This is likely to open up award availability as Japanese people (or their travel agents, actually) stop booking on NWA for the short to medium term. :)

p.s. The Asia-Pacific market is a completely different, hyper-competitive beast versus the rapidly consolidating domestic and, to a lesser extent, Atlantic/European market. The likelihood of any Asian-headquartered carrier (i.e. Cathay, Malaysia, Singapore) matching this move is very slim. Asians seem to consider Northwest the minimal-amenity LCC of trans-Pacific travel (i.e. passengers are already biased against NWA), and now travel agents aren't going to have any motivation to book their tour groups into those massive blocks that typically get reserved on NWA planes for them. I'd ordinarily just say "stupid stupid stupid", but well, whatever: nothing airline management does really surprises me any more these days.

Japan is like a whole different country. ;)

Commissions still live on in a big way in the US--just look at the Airlines 10k reports to see how much they pay out each year. While most mom and pop travel agents have seen their commissions go to zero, most online agents and large consolidators still command commissions from the airlines and there lies the problem.

It just means, book through NWA instead of a TA for better price as the TA will add service charges onto the ticket itself. However, TAs may just refuse to sell NWA tickets when it is in effect.

While the Japan-US traffic thru NW is dominated by the two biggest Japanese TAs, JTB and HIS, who will in my opinion still get some sort of commission in the future, the other Asian destinations, i.e. BKK, HKG, SIN are booked mostly thru other and smaller agencies. The decision to stop paying commission must have a negative impact on their willingness to book a fare on NW, especially considering that they still have better options.

Price transparency is universally regarded as a good thing for consumers. Those TAs who book away from NW to obtain a commission may find it awkward to explain why they didn't propose the cheapest fare to the customer.

Point well taken, but you have to realize that here in Japan things are
very different. "Cheapest" fare or anything "cheapest", as a matter of fact,
is not the deciding criteria. Quite the opposite is true.

This is true, but on my BKK-NRT flight last month, I got talking to the 70 year old Japanese man next to me. He flies NW to Thailand several times a year, and said he just figured out how to use nwa.com and said it was so easy. He told me he did not know how to use computers at all, but he could easily navigate the nwa.com site, and print his confimation number.

He told me he liked using the site and wouldn't go back to an agent, for NW travel at least.

He is a more frequent traveller, so he might be a little more willing to use the site, but NW has put a lot of money into their nwa.co.jp site, and it shows. They are probably banking on all of their frequent fliers sticking with them.

My gut feeling on this is NW has had this planned for a long time, but is jumping the gun because they want to make some short term numbers.

A couple months ago an NW employee commented to me that the whole point of the 787 project was to remove NRT from the equation. When NW surveyed their biggest customers they viewed the non-stops as adding 1-2 more days of productivity.

Getting rid of commissions and depending entirely on nwa.jp only makes sense if you are planning on reducing/downsizing metal ex NRT. Since the 787 isn't due until Q1 2010 I don't see the logic here.