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Posted Sept 25, 2009
The International Air transport Association announced new services to help airlines reduce costs and risks associated with credit card operations. Worthy goals, but does anyone really think credit card companies will lower their rates simply because IATA asks? IATA previously has cried out against GDS fees, saying it "cannot accept" $4 per transaction and demanding GDSs cut fees to something closer to 50 cents. How well did that go over?
Posted Jul 21, 2009
Here are some comments by UAL Corp. executives, from their second-quarter financial conference call this afternoon, about distribution and risk ...
Posted Jul 20, 2009
The now big political spat over credit card fees that UAL want the agents to shoulder has everyone weighing in.
As Richard Eastman noted many weeks ago this has significant potential implications. However, as I have noted, this is not something for everyone to get their noses bent out of shape on. We do have many other issues that are perhaps more important.
Posted Jul 18, 2009
Here's the full text of United's response to members of Congress, dated July 17 and signed by senior vice president of worldwide sales and distribution Jeff Foland ...
Posted Jul 15, 2009
No surprise here, but for the record AMR Corp. CEO Gerard Arpey minutes ago declined to comment on United Airlines' effort to save on payment expenses by requiring some travel agencies to use their own merchant agreements to process credit cards. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment about what we might or might not be thinking," he said. Sounds wise.
Posted Jul 3, 2009
From the Totally Useless Coincidences That Make For A Lame Excuse To Post A Blog Item category, here are a couple tidbits picked up this week that had to do with the number 28. I'm more of a 3, 13, 33 kind of guy myself, so in the interest of making no numerological sense at all ahead of this weekend when we Americans celebrate the birth of a nation, here are two on 28...
Posted Jun 26, 2009
I read with interest Richard Eastman's letter about United Airlines' recent move to pass the cost of selling their inventory onto the agency community, but have to disagree with the logic of his strawberry analogy. Richard asks: "If strawberry farmers don't pay the credit card charges absorbed by your local grocery store as a cost of bringing the strawberry to the buyer, why should airlines pay those charges?"
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