Most airlines bethesda and hotel today choose to make web fares available only on their own websites, because these fares are so low bethesda 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 through CRS''s to travel agents and the websites that rely on CRS''s is strictly an individual airline hotel decision, and will remain so once Orbitz is up and running. Several third party 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 in one place for their customers. And of course travel agents can book web fares off an airline''s website for a customer if bethesda they wish (although whether they get a commission on that booking is up to the individual airline).

Serious mischaracterizations have been made about 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 hotel part of a concerted effort by us competitors to use misinformation to prevent us from offering new competition to them and new choice bethesda to consumers. There is hotel no agreement by which any airline would be precluded from making any fare it chose available through any retail channel bethesda it chose. Airlines for 2 decades 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 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 hotel any other outlet.