Travel clearinghouse will stop terminate contract with carrier this summer
January 05, 2011|By Julie Johnsson, Tribune reporter
Sabre Holdings Group said Wednesday that it will stop distributing American Airlines' inventory of airline tickets and other products to travel agents this summer, escalating the battle over how air travel is sold by third parties.
Sabre, which runs the world's largest clearinghouse for travel transactions, intends to end its contract with American in August, a month ahead of the termination date. In the meantime, Sabre is ending discounts it had provided to the Texas-based carrier, while also making American's fares more difficult for travel agents to find than those of other carriers.
The moves turn American's battles to gain greater control over its fare data into an outright war with some of its closest distribution partners, analysts said. Processing more than 1 million transactions per minute during peak times, Sabre's travel network was built by American Airlines in 1960 and spun out of American parent AMR Corp. in 2000.
