Expedia Drops American Airlines Tickets From Listings | Hacker News Reader

Expedia Drops American Airlines Tickets From Listings

online.wsj.com

21 pointsjacquesm16 comments

Possible alternative articles on the matter since the wsj seems pretty serious about their paywall:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-02/expedia-drops-am... http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/01/01/expedia-drops-...

Typing the title into Google helps, not sure if the track the number in a cookie though.

> Typing the title into Google helps

Didn't work for me.

> not sure if the track the number in a cookie though.

I tried clearing my cookies (Firefox), and it still didn't work. I had to open it in Chromium via Google to get to the article: http://i.imgur.com/mcwOI.png

OT: General flight rant:

2 things (note - this is all from a 'economy' flyer standpoint)

1) The quality of my flights is almost always determined by the passengers around me - crying babies, rude/loud people, people too large for the seat next to me, etc. These factors play far more in to me having a good or bad flight vs AA/BA/Virgin/Continental/United/etc.

2) Boarding is insanely stupid. I'm not sure I could come up with a worse way except to say 'everyone get on whenever' (even that might end up being better in some cases). What needs to happen is to board by seat position relative to the windows - window seats should board first, then middle seats, then aisle seats. The time spent waiting for people who are in an aisle seat to get up, let window people get past, then repeat the process for middle-seat passengers is crazy. It's painful to watch this process play out in slow motion when it's so simple to fix. At least try it - I've been flying on and off for 25 years and have never seen this approach tried, nor heard of it being tried.

Granted, the 9 levels of 'special' customers (silver, advantage, bronze, elite, elite plus, gold, bronze+, etc) might be miffed if they didn't get on 3 minutes before everyone else, but the average time for boarding passengers would be reduced.

Rant over...

The reason you can't board by window seat first is that most people aren't traveling alone but with friends and family who are sitting next to them.

Try telling mom and dad that since he wanted the window little Johnnie has to get on first and they can follow ten minutes later.

Delays in boarding are slow because of people sitting next to each other who are not traveling together. If you have a minor with a window seat and you are sitting next to them, there's is no reason you can't board at the same time; you're not going to be getting up to let someone in after you've sat down.

One abuse I don't like but see often is the "we are traveling with an extended family of adults and one baby, so everyone gets to board 'early' due to the traveling-with-infant rule".

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.aa.com/i18n/urls/ota.jsp

Orbitz/Expedia are travel-agents --- kayak/ITA Software are simply aggregators of flight results. There is a world of difference. For one thing, I am not sure how Kayak would be able to handle an itinerary that has multiple airlines in involved (take AA from SFO->Bangkok, then continue on Bangkok Airlines to somewhere else for instance).

Additionally, with a travel agent (like Orbitz/Expedia) you buy your ticket through them, and you can contact them if your travel plans change. I recently (last week) was unable to board my flight to Thailand because my passport expired in <6 months. Even though my ticket was not refundable, the terms that orbitz had with my airline allowed me to cancel (after I missed my flight) for 200 dollars. That experience alone has made me rethink booking any airline faires directly through the airline website.

I've no experience with AA flights within the USA, but if they're anything like AA's transatlantic services then I'd say this is a great change for Expedia's customers.

Thankfully I've never been on a single AA flight (Virgin Atlantic gets my custom), but I've seen photos taken by friends and heard their stories (UK-USA flights) and, unless they've all been very unlucky, seems a safe bet that AA's transatlantic staff, planes and services are all pretty shoddy.

Y'know, AA isn't the greatest flying experience I've had, but the differences between airlines are really overplayed. The average AA experience is probably worse than the average Virgin experience, but you can have a tolerable time or a crappy time on either airline.

People dwell on tiny little annoyances when they're flying, because they're stuck in a metal tube with nothing to do for hours on end except dwell on things. This is why so many consumer complaints and stand-up comedians' jokes are about flying.

While it's true that people overthink small things, I find that the difference between my favourite airlines and my least favourites is big enough to make a flight enjoyable or not, and the stories I've heard of AA flights would, if I was on the flight, have made me completely hate it.

I have never flown AA on any of my flights, so I guess I don't care in that regard; as long as it doesn't result in less competition and thus higher prices, I don't suppose I will be effected.

this is great news!

we badly need shake-up in online travel agency space - companies like Expedia and Orbitz haven't innovated at all for the last decade. Great to see that change is coming from AA, who were pioneers of online travel engines in the first place.

Upvoted for having a view I hadn't thought to consider.

This isn't so much to do with shaking the market up as a wrangle with Travelport over the size of their commissions. Refusing to play ball with the middleman isn't exactly innovation. It's not even a new step for American either; in the past they forced Kayak to remove Orbitz listings of AA flights. The consumer might theoretically gain from lower prices by only booking direct on AA's terms; in practice they lose the ability to easily compare/save on multi-flight itineraries across multiple unaffiliated carriers.

I'm not the biggest fan of the current travel site model, but I think it's a little unfair to suggest they haven't innovated at all over that period; Orbitz didn't even exist at the start of the last decade. What American are doing is no more likely to stimulate innovation than Microsoft deciding on behalf of their OEM vendors what software options consumers should be offered.

in practice they lose the ability to easily compare/save on multi-flight itineraries across multiple unaffiliated carriers

Why? There's still Kayak and ITA Software, which I am a big fan of and who're not going anywhere any time soon.

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