Articles tagged “sabre”

A federal appeals court has asked for a partial do-over in antitrust litigation between US Airways and travel tech firm Sabre. After more than eight years and millions of dollars in expenses, the case has partly been reset to square one. Remarkable.

When it comes to implementing and adopting the New Distribution Capability standards for airline retailing, there needs to be a strong focus on enabling scalability, across the entire retailing, distribution, and fulfillment process.

A British Airways hiccup earlier this month was merely the latest tech outage at a number of airlines. Why does the industry suffer from so many glitches? Experts point to some deeper reasons beyond the commonly heard "old tech" explanation.

Sabre had tried the unorthodox legal tactic of pursuing its $360 million acquisition of Farelogix, an airline tech vendor, without waiting for approval from U.S. antitrust watchdogs. But it apparently didn't count on federal attorneys claiming they have text messages between Sabre executives acknowledging the anti-competitive nature of the deal.

Spirit's decision to buy more airline technology from Sabre signals two things. Sabre has overcome a sales slump. And Spirit is investing to cope with its growth.

The travel technology giant said Wednesday it would go ahead with its planned $360 million acquisition on August 21. If the U.S. federal attorneys aren't happy about it, they can sue, Sabre said. No travel tech company has used, and threatened in public to use, its lawyers as much as Sabre in the past decade.

Sabre's management must have seen this quarter's sales slowdown coming. After all, the company's prior management had underspent in the research and development work necessary to keep its sales growth humming. Sabre's new leaders have been investing in its long-term growth, but the payoff in sales growth may take awhile.

Flexible technology is often confused with built-to-order technology. What the airline industry needs today to meet customer expectations is much more robust than that — it needs a way to implement solutions that allow them to use the best technological offering for each specific task.

Sure enough, more travel companies are starting to inch toward direct booking. Southwest has always been a leader in this area among the big U.S. carriers, and this move will help it do more business with corporate travelers.

Some airlines track delays and cancellations associated with computer outages internally to identify patterns and recurring issues that need fixing. The industry as a whole might benefit if it shared such data. But don't hold your breath on that happening.