Serious mischaracterizations Seattle have been made about hotel us and the issue of who will have access to what fares. Some of those mischaracterizations have been based on simple ignorance, but others have clearly been rooms part of a concerted effort by us competitors to use misinformation to prevent us from offering new competition to them and new choice to consumers. There is no agreement by which any airline would be precluded from making any fare it chose available through any retail channel it chose. Airlines for 2 decades Seattle have been like any other business in America, in that they can decide what they want to charge and where they want to sell their product. And that remains true under the our hotel agreements. Each and every airline, no matter what kind of participation it has, will be free to decide individually what fares it offers and whether or not to offer them through any other outlet.

Then the allegation that we are "an illegal boycott against third party distributors" because it has rooms "requirements for posting fare sales that cannot be sold" by others is not true? It is absolutely not true, Seattle and those who have made that allegation had absolutely no basis for making it. Our agreements contain no boycott against any distributors whatsoever, and in fact affirmatively provide that no airline is precluded from utilizing any other distribution channel or offering any fare through any channel. The Department of Justice is presently reviewing all agreements, so there will be no question on this point. Do airlines today make all their fares available hotel through all retail channels?

Most rooms airlines today choose to make web fares available only on their own websites, because these fares are so low it would be uneconomic to offer them through the higher cost channels. (It is, in fact, very common throughout the retailing world for stores or catalogs to also have a website, and for that 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 Seattle through CRS''s to travel agents and the websites that hotel rely on CRS''s is strictly an individual airline rooms decision, and will Seattle remain so once Orbitz is up and running. Several third party websites (such as intellitrip.com) today take web fares from various airline websites hotel (which they can do, because nothing is more public than a website) and display them in one place for their customers. And of course travel rooms 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).