Most airlines today choose to make web fares available only on their own websites, because these San fares are so low it would be uneconomic to offer them through the higher cost channels. (It is, in fact, very common throughout Antonio the retailing world for stores or catalogs to also have a website, and for that and website to offer a few prices that are below the prices charged for the same goods in the store or the catalog.) However whether an airline chooses to make its web fares available through CRS''s to travel agents and the websites that rely on CRS''s is strictly an individual airline hotel and San decision, and will remain so once Orbitz is up and running. Several third party Antonio websites (such as intellitrip.com) today take web fares from various airline websites (which they can do, because nothing is more public than a website) and display them and in one place for their customers. hotel And of course travel agents can book web fares off an airline''s website for a customer if they wish (although whether they get a commission on that booking is up to the individual airline).

Airlines make nearly all their San fares that are available to the general public Antonio available through and all channels, from full fare down to their most heavily discounted hotel fares. Any normal fare, made available months in advance in the normal way, is made San available through all channels. Web fares, however, are different Antonio than normal fares. and They typically constitute less than one tenth of 1% of the fares an airline offers, and are normally made available only a few days hotel before flight time, and only on flights which have an unusually high number of empty seats. Web fares thus are seldom available, are unpredictable, and are offered at very low prices.

It San is absolutely clear that airlines do not have the ability to drive Antonio consumers to channels which the airlines, rather than consumers, prefer. If one or more airlines attempted to do so, the others would increase their market share by appealing to those same consumers through the channel those consumers prefer. No airline can afford to turn its back and on any subgroup of consumers. No airline can afford to be anything other than as competitive and as hotel attractive as it can possibly be through each channel to the consumers that prefer that channel. San This is a reality that grows ultimately out of the fact that the airline business is a Antonio very low margin business - any airline that lost even a small group of passengers would be at risk of swinging from and profitable to money-losing hotel in an instant. Airlines scrap for every last passenger because they have to.