This summer will remembered (in travel tech circles) as the moment when a legacy carrier tried to flex its muscles against the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs).
Lufthansa's Euro 16 surcharge on bookings via intermediaries using a GDS may, according to some, may just be a re-run of the grandstanding by American Airlinesin 2010 to encourage more direct bookings by side-lining the supposed gate-keepers of distribution.
Regardless of whether Lufthansa's bold move triggers the industry change many are seeking, less is written about the irony of the situation given what is happening at the other end of the airline spectrum.
Whilst Lufthansa (and apparently at least more than one other legacy carrier) has questioned the validity of the GDS model, low cost carriers have seemingly - and against the odds - embraced it.
In their eyes the GDSs are no longer the dinosaurs of the industry, with at least three of the major LCCs around the world now having forgotten their anti-GDS stance and signed distribution deals.
Domestic SouthWest is still missing ("talks continue", is the regular phrase you will hear though, if you ask"), but AirAsia is now in and, perhaps most surprising of all, Ryanair is on all three networks (starting with Travelport in March 2014).
The LCC-GDS (r)evolution actually began in 2007 when Ryanair arch rival EasyJet decided to give third party distribution a try, signing with Amadeus and others to enable travel agencies to buy its tickets.
Interestingly, the union between the carrier and the GDS may not have been as successful as originally expected.
Speaking this week at the Aviation Festival in London, Amadeus's Frederik Odeen says that bookings on EasyJet from agencies have doubled year-on-year between 2013 and 2014.
Wonderful... But why?
Odeen, who oversees strategy and development for "new carriers" (as Amadeus likes to call LCCs), admits that initially volumes were low.
He says the process by which offline travel agencies were meant to book EasyJet tickets on the GDS was inhibiting to users, not least because they use very particular commands and keystrokes when buying tickets for legacy carriers.
In other words: XML connections favoured by LCCs, especially for payments, do not work in the same way as they would into, say, Emirates or Delta.
So Amadeus built a system called Light Ticketing which replicates the existing booking flow and allows an agent to work in the same way with an LCC as it would with anyone else.
It seems a perhaps bit obvious to those on the outside, but in the world of corporate travel agencies (the sector where all the LCCs are trying to gain influence) such alterations in flows and procedures can mean the difference between an agent making a booking or not.
Alongside the 100% increase in booking volumes in year following the introduction of Light Ticketing, EasyJet says agency bookings over same period versus web bookings increased 45% between 2013 and 2014.
Odeen concedes this is a one-off, with no expectation for volumes to increase at that degree year-on-year again.
Still, it's the little things that matter...
NB:EasyJet image via Shutterstock.