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

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 part hotel and in and lexington 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 hotel by which any airline would be precluded from making any fare it chose available through any retail in channel it chose. Airlines for 2 decades have been like any other business in America, lexington 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. hotel Each and every airline, no matter what kind of participation in and lexington it has, will be free to decide individually what fares it offers and whether hotel and in or not to offer lexington them through any other outlet.

Our agreements not only contain no provision barring any airline from making any fare available through any hotel channel, they contain in an affirmative non-exclusivity provision that makes it explicit that no airline is prevented from making any fare it chooses available through any channel it chooses. Our agreement contains a non-discrimination clause by which lexington those airlines that will receive the indirect discount hotel on the CRS booking in fee agree in return to make available on any fare they publish and lexington make available to hotel the in general public through any lexington other channel. But that of course does not preclude them from offering any fare through any other channel.