American Airlines is proceeding with plans to sign up travel agencies to access its reservations system through AA Direct Connect and outside the global distribution systems.
In a new American Airlines Distribution Update Blog, launched late last week, the airline offers Direct Connect enrollment, asking agencies to sign up and whether they prefer to connect via third-party technology providers such as AgentWare, BookingBuilder or Cornerstone [pdf], through the Web-based Farelogix SPRK desktop, or through direct XML API schema.
This is how American describes Direct Connect: "The AA Direct Connect is a direct link into AA’s host reservation system for the facilitation of availability, shopping and pricing, booking, ticketing, and post-ticketing servicing transactions. The AA Direct Connect utilizes modern technology links, employing XML messaging which can handle more robust and flexible transactions."
Asked how many or which agencies or corporations have signed up to receive this data, which would include the airline's optional services, Cory Garner, American's director of merchandising strategy, says the airline has "some important wins under our belt and we expect to continue building on that momentum throughout the rest of the year."
He says travel agencies may be reluctant to disclose their involvement because they fear GDS wrath or for competitive reasons."
"Some of them are concerned with retribution from the GDSs, while others are not interested in tipping off their competitors that they will have a competitive advantage when it comes to American Airlines' content," Garner says.
The further development of AA Direct Connect is part of a continuing dispute between some airlines and the GDSs about how best to offer airline ancillary services and under what technologies and terms the GDSs would be able to access the data.
The new blog outlines American's stance on ancillary services and distribution policy, says Garner in the blog's maiden post, as "airline distribution is on the verge of being reinvented."
In the blog, American says it envisions a new dividing line [pdf] between which services the airline provides and which services will remain with the GDSs.
In the future, American hopes, the shopping process will reside in airline systems and not in the GDSs so the airlines can more effectively merchandise and "the GDSs will supply agency functionality almost exclusively."
The GDSs counter that they are perfectly capable of handling airline merchandising and that airlines are raising technology issues as a smokescreen for a commercial dispute.
After the blog's launch, Garner explained that the American sales team requested it.
"While many of them are the same people who once sold Sabre to our travel agency partners, it can be difficult for them to master the distribution issues of the day at the pace that technology innovation demands," Garner says.
He adds that the airline decided to supplement the sales team message with the blog to get the word out to travel agency and corporate partners.