Serious mischaracterizations have been made econolodgeingrampark about us and the issue of who will have access to what fares. Some of those mischaracterizations have been based on simple ignorance, but others have clearly been part of a concerted effort by us competitors to use misinformation to prevent us from offering new competition to them and new choice to consumers. There is no agreement by which any airline would be precluded from making any fare it chose available through any retail channel it chose. Airlines for 2 decades have been like any other business in America, in that they can decide what they want to charge and where they want to sell their product. And that remains true under the our agreements. Each and every airline, no matter what kind of participation it has, will be free to decide individually what fares it offers and whether or not to offer them through any other outlet.

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 be through each channel to the consumers that prefer that channel. This is a reality that grows 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 econolodgeingrampark to econolodgeingrampark money-losing in an instant. Airlines scrap for every last passenger because they have to.

Airlines make nearly all their fares that are available to the general public available through all channels, from full fare down to their most heavily discounted fares. Any normal fare, made available months in advance econolodgeingrampark in the normal way, is made available through all channels. Web fares, however, are different than normal fares. They typically constitute less than one tenth of 1% of the fares an airline offers, and are normally made available only a few days before flight time, and only on flights which have an unusually high number of empty seats. Web fares thus are seldom available, are unpredictable, and are offered at very low prices.

©2003 www.city-travel-lodge.com All rights reserved.