Skift Take
The long-running case revolved around practices that the leading U.S. provider of airline fare data to travel agents imposes on nearly all airlines. If the verdict stands, it doesn’t make Sabre change, well, anything. Except maybe a smaller tip for a barista.
Airlines huffed at global distribution services companies like Sabre Corp. for decades. They puffed about how excessive fees and anti-competitive terms imposed by businesses that provide flight schedules, fare discount information, and booking services to travel agents were costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
And on Thursday, a federal court jury in Manhattan blew their house down, awarding American Airlines $1 after an 11-year lawsuit against Sabre, whose dominance of the U.S. market for flight data used by travel agents has been one of the industry’s longest-running melodramas. A nominal victory for American, the result finds that Sabre’s practices didn’t cause American any financial harm.
The dispute was over practices Sabre used to force airlines to use its services, and prevent carriers from reaching out to travel agents and business travelers more directly. Bolstered by a 5-4 2018 Supreme Court decision that made it harder for antitrust plaintiffs to win, Sabre’s effective victory assures that competition and the industry’s recovery from Covid-19, rather than litigation, will be the primary near-term threat to Sabre’s position.
A U.S. District Court jury returned the verdict after a three-week trial. American inherited the case when it acquired US Airways in 2013. US Airways had sued Sabre in 2011, arguing that practices such as forcing the airline to make all of its fares bookable through Sabre and barring the airline from charging travel agents a separate fee to cover Sabre’s service had cost it nearly $300 million. In 2010, US Airways reported a profit of $502 million on sales of $11.9 billion….