Recently
ARC (the old Airlines Reporting Corporation) has begin to make some of its vast data more readily available for the marketplace.
ARC said it and American Airlines are working to eliminate duplicate bookings. Work began in February, according to ARC, which said it "is now ready to bring additional carriers onboard in the development process in order to expand the service which is hoped will soon be of industry-wide benefit."
OK - so how about a little good news for a change. I finally got to see the numbers for July from ARC. There is clearly a trend here. Even accounting for the aberrations in Feb and the changes in Easter - we can see that since March the transaction numbers have clearly changed for the better. July's numbers show only .77 percent Y/Y down. August which should be out in the next week will be interesting. I would actually expect that we will see a definitive improvement in September as this was the month when sales first started to dive last year.
Developing standards and solutions to handle ancillary revenue items now in vogue at most airlines has been and will continue to be a challenging task that requires coordination between various industry constituents. The solution favored by ARC--the
electronic miscellaneous document--has its good, bad and ugly sides.
Jetblue has finally conceded that actually it does need a way to pay for tickets sold via travel agents on the global distribution systems.
So, facing the inevitable, they have joined ARC. This makes jetBlue a true conventional carrier.
ASTA is mad at Delta. The association on Wednesday accused the carrier of "forcibly" collecting travel agency funds for "booking violations that were, in some cases, likely caused by technical issues related to Delta's audit program, rather than by agency malfeasance."
