The travel industry is riveted by the chutzpah of American Airlines. By forcing Orbitz and Expedia to de-list AA flights, they are taking a hard stance on the future of distribution. The media storm suggests a stand-off of epic proportions -- one of the largest suppliers vs. two of the largest agencies in the world (and now Sabre is in the fray also).

But what is really going on here? Is this about fees? Is it about control? Is it about technology costs? A little of each, of course Read More »

Below is a talk I gave at The Beat Live, a travel business conference attended by some of the top executives in the industry a few weeks ago in Chicago. It's my perspective on how some of the existing major players in the industry need to re-think their capabilities and roles in order to adjust to the changing market.

I welcome your comments and thoughts. Read More »

As the world now knows, Southwest is planning to buy AirTran for a mixture of cash and stock valued at $1.4b.

Most of the aviation community was caught off-guard by the suddenness of the move, if not exactly surprised. You see, Southwest has been saying for years that it was keeping options open for an acquisition despite always staying a little distant from the merger game. AirTran has sort of done the same, except for attempts to buy Midwest a few years ago before Republic bought it ( Read More »

Last week I talked about how airline loyalty programs are making a comeback. To piggy back on that, I wanted to offer my perspectives on which are the best programs and how you can master your own portfolio. Read More »

This is Part 1 of 2 in a series of posts airline loyalty programs. 

It seems everyone has a loyalty program nowadays. Buy 6 cups of coffee at your local cafe, get the 7th free. Get points for transactions at your bank. Reap rewards for your gas purchases. And the newest one I learned about just this past weekend when I went to grab some lunch -- make sure to get your Panera Card.

Read More »

The big news from last week was not that United and Continental passed Department of Justice scrutiny. It was that they did it by giving Southwest an incredible gift. In a behind-the-scenes deal, Southwest was granted 36 slots at Newark from Continental as part of a slot divestiture that cleared the merger of the DOJ's one area of concern. As a result, the DOJ dropped anti-trust proceedings and the merger has cleared a major hurdle on its way to approval. Read More »

I'm an avid user of consumer flight-search tools. I always have one or two trips I'm planning at any given time. I use a handful of flight search engines on a daily basis, always checking fares at least once or twice a day (you'd be surprised how quickly options and fares move around). I'm also a general believer that flight search options out there are pretty good. Especially for domestic travel, it's not hard to quickly know what is available and for how much. But that doesn't mean there isn't Read More »

The following is a proposal to speak at The Beat Live. Readers of The Beat will vote for their choice among eight proposals, and the speaker with the most votes will deliver a keynote speech on Wednesday Sept. 22. Read More »

If you want to place blame for tarmac delays, bad airline customer service, and nickel & diming fees -- look no further than how you yourself purchase plane tickets. As consumers, we choose to purchase services based on any number of criteria that are important to us. In return, suppliers of these services cater their strategies to try to meet our needs and win that business.

If we purchase things as a commodity, it will get sold as a commodity. Plain and simple. Read More »

With the full set of statistics about May now released, people have been doing some analysis on whether the tarmac delay rule that took effect on April 29 had an impact on cancellations. The DOT is happy to promote that the number of 3 hours+ tarmac delays in May was 5, a major reduction from the 34 on 2009. So clearly it worked, right?

No so fast, points out Brett Snyder in the Cranky Flier column. Cancellations are also way up, so that means many people people were inconvenienced to reduce the Read More »