Who will blink first?

Kayak

or

American Airlines

??

Someone will have to.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Kayak-American spat heading to the courts

Just when people thought the row between Kayak and Amercian Airlines couldn't get any more bitter (last installment: War of Words), it turns out that American Airlines has now filed a lawsuit against Kayak.

Papers were filed in Tarrant County, Texas, on 6 August. [Open PDF]

This suit is to stop Defendants ongoing violations, and recover damanges for prior violations, of the terms of its contract with American to distribute American fares and related information.

It goes on:

Defendant intentionally violated these rules in order to secure lucrative referral or other fees form third parties in connection with sending them bookings on American flights or giving them preferred rights, which caused Amercian to incure substantional, unwarranted costs.

This is going to get very messy indeed.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

New comments from Kayak - it was us who pulled the plug, not them

Our story yesterday about Kayak and it's ongoing row with American Airlines indicated how irritated the meta search engine has become with the carrier and its axing of live feeds.

A statement we received from Kayak admitted that its results were "a little less comprehensive" following AA's decision to cut ties with the meta search engine.

But as it stands today the row is likely to escalate further after Kayak got in touch again last night to effectively add a Molotov Cocktail to an already fiery corporate riot.

A spokeswoman told us:

Kayak.com is disappointed that American Airlines has chosen to misrepresent to loyal users that they terminated their relationship with Kayak.com.

The truth is that Kayak.com terminated the relationship because we refused to concede to AA’s demand to not display AA fares available through online travel agencies alongside those from AA.com.

Kayak.com became aware of AA’s misstatement after our user feedback system started receiving supportive emails from consumers disappointed with AA’s actions, a number of whom forwarded us the inaccurate email AA sent out last night.

We hope that AA will not only agree to again allow consumers to compare AA fares on Kayak.com and SideStep.com, but will refrain from making false statements.

So now it's a matter not only of how fares are represented, but who is telling the truth - apparently.

One suspects that Kayak chief executive Steve Hafner - who is well known for not mixing his words - had a slightly terser series of sentences, but the corp comms people thought better of releasing them into the ether.

NB: See Norm Rose's anaylsis of the Kayak-AA situation.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kayak american airlines

So many twists in the tale...

Our story on Tuesday said American Airlines could pull the plug on its product feed to Kayak because it doesn't like the way its aa.com search results have to compete with orbitz and cheaptickets results for the same flights

The airline said it could end its relationship with kayak and sister brand sidestep as early as TOMORROW unless concessions were made!

In the meantime, site analytics specialist Compete has come up with some pretty interesting stats on what AA stands to win or lose from such a move.

In June kayak and sidestep sent 1.3% of all visits to aa.com.

These visits converted extremely well with Compete's findings showing that almost 5% of all conversions on aa.com came from kayak or sidestep.

And, visits referred from kayak and sidestep to aa.com converted at 9.3% in June, quite a lot higher than the airline's own website average per visit of 2.7%.

The flip side of the coin is this - Compete also analysed the rate of people clicking over to AA flights on Orbitz revealing that 72% make their way to aa.com anyway at some point over a month.

So, AA will seemingly lose a chunk of business by withdrawing from the meta-searchers but in all likelihood get a good chunk of it back a week or two later!

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Extras, extras, read all about them...

Ancillary revenues got almost as much podium time at EyeForTravel’s summit this week as social media.

There’s a shift in how airlines are thinking about this – it’s more important for them to try to squeeze as much revenue out of their core business – ie flying people around – than it is to take a commission on an insurance policy.

Ryanair’s head of sales marketing and commercial revenues, Sinead Finn, told the opening session: ‘If we depended on our partners for profit, we'd be in trouble.’

Menu-based pricing for seats is driving this focus on core product ancillaries. And in three years time Ryanair wants 20% of its revenues to be from ancillaries. Other businesses could call it ‘upselling’ (extra legroom on your seat to Sharm, anyone?) but Ryanair is used to having to defend its business model, despite its constantly lowering fares, excellent punctuality figures and bumper profits.

American Airlines, the world’s largest carrier, calls it “merchandising”. In a side room on day two, its international distribution manager Cory Garner admitted that the world’s biggest airline is currently picking up more bookings through third parties than direct. It appears that merchandising its direct channel more effectively is an increasing priority.

It’s looking at “behavioural economics” for some help here. “Customers are predictably irrational,” Garner said. “How you propose an economic transaction can be more important than what you propose.”

An issue here is that not all third parties have the infrastructure in place to be able to deliver the same merchandising opportunities as a brand dotcom, and the GDSs are a bit behind the curve as well.

(This isn’t an issue for Ryanair because it doesn’t sell seats through intermediaries. easyJet, which does, factors in potential loss of ancillary revenue into its point of sale booking fee for third parties).

Ornagh Hoban from Datalex put the issue in perspective by saying that airlines are still on a learning curve when it comes to maximising ancillary revenues. Hotels however appear to be in a win-win situation. Third parties are a valuable distribution channel, both for volumes and yields. But the big gains can come from the merchandising opportunities - upgrades, breakfast, spa treatments - through the direct channel.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

American Airlines could be playing a canny game with Google

Much has been written in the past few days about the lawsuit filed in the US by American Airlines against Google.

Irony corner: check out Google News to see just how many news stories there have been.

In short, the scrap is over American's annoyance that Google will sell the keywords "American Airlines" to all and sundry, meaning that rival airlines, online travel agencies, meta search sites, et al, can hijack the paid-for ad slots against search results.

On Google UK, Airline Network is currently occupying the top spot.

Amid the coverage that this is potentially the biggest lawsuit over brand hijacking ever brought against Google, lies this poigant comment in a post - "Lawsuit destined to Fail" - on ZDNet.

"Instead of going after the people actually abusing their trademark, they want Google to pay the price for letting it happen in the first place."

Copyright and branding law is a minefield, of course, but is Google really that unstoppable?

One argument could be that American could actually be trying to raise the profile of the issue again to the extent that other high profile brands take a stance. And then, with a group of companies in commercial solidarity, Google might find the problem too big to ignore.

Interesting times...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: american american airlines lawsuit