Expedia, in a show of solidarity with one of its major competitors, has made it more difficult for online consumers to find the listings of American Airlines.
Users researching flights and fares must now click through to a separate Expedia page to get detailed information from the carrier.
Expedia's move follows American Airlines' decision to stop selling tickets through Orbitz earlier this week.
"This has been done in light of both American Airlines' recent decision to prevent Orbitz from selling its inventory and a possible disruption in Expedia's ability to sell American Airlines tickets when our contract with American Airlines expires," Expedia said in a statement, ABC News reported. "American Airlines has shown it only intends to do business with travel agencies through a new model that is anti-consumer and anti-choice."
American, which has cited a need to cut distribution costs, removed its listings and other features from Orbitz two days ago. It contends the model used by online travel agencies prevents it from offering the lowest possible fares.
In a statement, American Airlines called Expedia's move "unwarranted" and said it would look into options to correct the situation.
"While tickets for air travel on American remain available for purchase on Expedia, its favoritism toward other airlines' airfares may lead consumers into believing that they have fewer choices, even in situations where American's fares are lower ... than other airlines that are listed first," American spokesman Ryan Mikolasik said.
Unintended consequences
Scott Kessler, a Standard & Poor's equities analyst, said the Expedia move could bring unintended consequences for American, which pulled its content from Orbitz soon after a Circuit Court judge in Illinois denied an injunction request seeking to keep the carrier from doing so.
"The pendulum may have swung with Expedia getting involved here," Kessler said. American was "not anticipating that this could unify the online travel agencies in their efforts to not just provide choice to consumers but to run successful businesses."
Orbitz said it generated more than $800 million in sales for American in the year ended Sept. 30. It also said revenue from American products booked on Orbitz accounted for about 5 percent of company net revenue of $575.1 million for the first nine months of 2010.
"Now, substantially more revenue is at risk for American Airlines than the $800 million in annualized sales Orbitz was delivering," Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition advocacy group, said in a statement on Thursday after the Expedia change was disclosed.
"The move does make things a bit more difficult for consumers in terms of comparison shopping, since they will have to remember to search American separately if using Orbitz," Anne Banas, executive editor of SmarterTravel.com, told ABC News. "However, my advice would be to use a meta-search engine like Bing Travel or Kayak that searches multiple sites — including Orbitz and American — at the same time.
Strained relationshipsThe dispute is the latest sign of strains between airlines and the companies that sell airline tickets, including online sellers like Orbitz.
Airlines have traditionally paid sellers a commission. American also pays fees to the global distribution companies that provide the flight information.
Now, American wants Orbitz to get that flight information directly from the airline, cutting out the global distribution systems. American has said that will reduce costs and also allow it to make more personalized offers to customers such as hotels and car rentals.
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The global distribution systems have not moved as fast as they could have to upgrade their technology, but American's move with Orbitz is "rather severe," said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst for Forrester Research. "It seems like they want to scorch the earth."
He predicted that travelers who want to fly on American will seek out its tickets on the airline's website. Travelers who don't know what happened with Orbitz, or don't care which airline they fly, are unlikely to notice American's absence from Orbitz, he said.
Traveler advocates have said American's move will make it harder to comparison shop.
"There is profit in confusion, there is profit in fragmentation of all the fares and the fees so consumers can't comparison shop," Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition said earlier this week.
He said airlines ultimately would like to flip the current financial arrangement around and have travel agents pay them for access to flight information, rather than American paying every time someone else sells a ticket on one of its flights.
American seeks freedomAmerican's vice president for sales, Derek DeCross, said in a statement that the airline needs to be "free to customize its product offerings to improve the customer experience as well as distribute its products in a way that does not result in unnecessary costs."
American had threatened to pull out of Orbitz on Dec. 1. But Orbitz got a state court judge in Chicago to block the threat temporarily. It made its move on Tuesday shortly after judge Martin S. Agran declined to issue an injunction. Agran ruled that any breach of contract can be sorted out with a lawsuit later.
The request to block American was brought by privately held Travelport Ltd., which owns 48 percent of Orbitz. It also runs two of the biggest so-called global distribution systems, Galileo and Worldspan. American spokesman Ryan Mikolasik said it has been negotiating with other online ticket sellers. The Orbitz negotiation was made more difficult because of Travelport's involvement as owner of the two global distribution systems, he said.
Separately, Delta Air Lines Inc. on Tuesday said it would stop selling tickets through three smaller travel websites, CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com, and BookIt.com effective on Dec. 17.
Last week a Delta executive told analysts that some ticket venues have more value than others. The airline wants "as direct a relationship and channel to our best customers as we can," said Glenn Hauenstein, Delta's executive vice president for network planning, revenue management, and marketing.
He said he's aiming for Delta's own website to be more like an Apple store and suggested that other travel websites are more like Best Buy, with similar products, but a different customer experience, he said.