American Airlines Accuses Sabre of Misleading Travel Advisors

American Airlines is suing Sabre over its New Airline Storefront (NAS) display, which it claims produces biased search results and misleads travel advisors.

According to Travel Weekly, the airline filed a lawsuit in Tarrant County, Texas on Tuesday asking the court to issue a temporary injunction to prevent Sabre from using NAS ahead of a requested jury trial.

NAS, which debuted in April, was designed with help from American’s competitor Delta Air Lines. It displays fare inquiry results in virtual shelves, grouping fares with similar product attributes on each shelf. Delta’s involvement in developing the display is part of a broader strategy to showcase all of its offerings, with the airline recently entering into a new contract with Sabre that does away with traditional flat segment fees. As of Thursday, Delta is scaling the amount it pays Sabre for a booking based upon the value of that booking.

American outlined several examples of the biased results in the NAS, including its Flagship First seat on a transcontinental flight being displayed alongside Delta’s and United Airlines’ business-class products, leaving out American’s business-class offering.

“As American repeatedly has complained, and Sabre is fully aware, Sabre’s new format does and will disadvantage American by providing inaccurate and misleading displays of American’s travel information, including its products, services, fares, schedules and inventory, to travel agents who subscribe to Sabre’s distribution services,” the lawsuit states. “In addition, Sabre told American that it intends to pay added incentives to travel agencies who book higher-end tickets on Delta under a new value-based booking fee model. This would cause travel agents to book critical business travelers on other airlines over American.”

“Sabre’s breaches of its contractual duty to display American flight and fare content in a fair, accurate, and non-misleading manner have caused and will cause harm,” the lawsuit continues. “Travel agents and customers need and are entitled to transparency and the fair and unbiased display of travel information through a GDS. Sabre’s storefront forces travel agents to take extra steps to find American products, services and fares comparable to Delta products, services and fares.”

American is Sabre’s largest client.