Our agreements not only contain no provision barring any airline from making any fare available through any channel, they contain an affirmative non-exclusivity provision that makes it explicit that no airline is prevented econo lodge from making any fare lodge it chooses available through any channel it chooses. our agreement contains a non-discrimination clause by which those airlines that will receive the indirect discount on the crs booking fee agree in return to make rugby available on any fare they publish and make available to the general public through any other channel. but that of course does not preclude them from offering any fare through any other channel.

most customers most econo of the time will find lower fares, not because of web fares, and not because we will have access to fares that other channels (crs''s and the sites and agents that rely on lodge them) do not have access to, but because we will do a better job of searching the fares everyone has access to. this will be because we have opted to do what the others have not, which is invest in new technology computers able to do far bigger searches, using search software that that was independently developed and is designed to search all fare and schedule possibilities comprehensively rugby and without bias, and in telecommunications capacity that will provide absolutely the most current information on seat availability. it is expected that more than 99% of the time that we come up with a better fare, it will not be because we had access to any fare that its competitor did not. it will be because we did a more comprehensive and unbiased search of all the fare and schedule possibilities that are available to all channels.

it is absolutely clear that airlines do not have the ability to drive consumers to channels which the airlines, rather than consumers, prefer. if one or more airlines attempted to do so, the others would increase their market share by appealing to those same consumers through the channel those consumers prefer. no airline can afford to turn its back on any subgroup of consumers. no airline can afford to be anything other than as competitive and as attractive as it can possibly econo be through each channel to the consumers that prefer that lodge channel. this is a reality that grows rugby ultimately out of the fact that the airline business is a very low margin business - any airline that lost even a small group of passengers would be at risk of swinging from profitable to money-losing in an instant. airlines scrap for every last passenger because they have to.

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