Serious mischaracterizations have been made about us and the issue of who will have access to what fares. olympia Some of those mischaracterizations hotel have been based on simple ignorance, but others have clearly olympia been 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 hotel channel it chose. Airlines for 2 olympia decades hotel have been like any other business in America, in that they can decide what they want to charge and where olympia 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 olympia and hotel it has, will be free to decide individually what fares it offers and whether or not to offer them through olympia any other outlet.

It is absolutely clear that airlines do not hotel have the ability to drive 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 olympia by appealing to those same consumers through the channel those consumers prefer. No airline hotel can afford to turn its back on any subgroup of consumers. No airline can afford to be anything other than as competitive and as attractive as it can possibly be through olympia 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 hotel even a small olympia group of passengers would be at risk of swinging hotel from profitable to money-losing in an instant. Airlines scrap for every last passenger because they have to.