American Airlines has won a US court order temporarily barring Sabre from hindering electronic access to flight and fare data during a contract row.
State court Judge Don Cosby granted the provisional order in Fort Worth, Texas yesterday. The airline said: “The order prohibits Sabre from continuing its recently announced practice of intentionally making it difficult for American’s agents and customers from finding and purchasing American services” through Sabre.
American has developed an electronic reservation system, Direct Connect, to provide pricing options direct to larger online travel agencies. Direct Connect competes against Sabre, which was once owned by the airline.
The carrier is also trying to drive more people to book flights through its own website and has withdrawn fares from Orbitz in the US.
A Sabre spokeswoman said: “Sabre is confident that our actions are well within our contractual rights, and we will aggressively defend against American Airlines’ baseless claims to the contrary.
“We are confident that the court will affirm Sabre’s contractual right to protect our customers’ interests and support airlines that value transparent and efficient comparison shopping.”
The judge temporarily barred Sabre from “disfavouring” the airline’s content in its primary search, display and pricing functions and ordered the parties to return to court on January 24 for another hearing.