Haiti Needs YOUR Help

A somber moment from our usual glib. The pictures and news reports coming from Haiti are shocking to say the least. North America's poorest country (indeed, one of the world's poorest countries) has been rocked by a brutal earthquake of epic proportions.

I encourage all of our readers to take a brief moment to assess their position in life and consider donating to the Red Cross in order to help the relief efforts in Haiti.

American Airlines has announced a mileage bonus tomorrow for all donations to the Red Cross tomorrow at AA.com. If that makes the difference, go for it.

I hope that all of us in the travel industry will take a moment to help. Haiti is hardly a glamorous destination of 5 star hotels and private jets - far from it. But the people of Haiti are in their darkest hour - now is our time to shine.

Round I: Starwood vs. Hilton, Round II: AA vs. DL

Crains NY is reporting that American Airlines has filed a lawsuit against Chuck Imhof who recently left the top sales position at AA in New York for a similar role heading up Delta's sales efforts. The suit alleges that Mr. Imhof, prior to his resignation, emailed confidential strategy and pricing documents to a personal email account from his work account.

Sounds quite similar to the current saga unfolding between Starwood and Hilton where several senior executives departed Starwood for Hilton and, according to Starwood's complaint, decided to take more than a few confidential documents along to jump-start their future careers.

AA is sueing to prevent Imhof from working for Delta and is also suing him personally to claw back deferred compensation, performance bonuses and stock options as well as legal fees.

We are waiting for a copy of the actual complaint - we'll have more to share after we review.

American Airlines to Allow One-Way Mileage Redemptions

Over the weekend, American Airlines quietly released new functionality on AA.com which simplifies mileage redemption and allows one-way award travel. This may not seem all that huge, but AA is the first US major carrier to allow customers to redeem half the number of miles for a one-way ticket.

In the past, if a consumer wanted a simple one-way ticket, they were required to redeem the full amount of miles required for a round-trip. For example, a one way ticket from JFK to LAX now "costs" 12,500 miles or half of the 25,000 miles required for a roundtrip "MileSAAver" award in coach.

Consumers can also now book a coach ticket in one direction and first class in the other - handy if award seats are only available in first one way and coach the other. Also nice in this case because the first class award seat is 25,000 miles one way - the same amount as the "double mileage" often required for a seat in coach. We'll take a big seat any day!

It also makes combining miles and paid tickets an interesting proposition, especially in today's world where many airfares are simple one-way tickets. For example, if you found a great fare to LAX from JFK for say $129 but the return was very expensive, you might look at buying a ticket one way (and earning more miles!) and using miles for the return.

Southwest, JetBlue, and AirTran all offer one-way awards today but AA is the first of the majors. Many international carriers also offer the option including fellow AA oneworld partners British Airways and Cathay Pacific along with Air France/KLM.

Delta joins AA in Suggesting that OTAs and Travel Agents Should Pay for Content

If you listened to Delta's Q1 earnings call this morning, you heard some interesting commentary on the future of distribution according to Delta.

DL management echoed American's CEO's suggestion on their call last week that the time would come when OTAs and agents would pay the airlines for their content. Interesting how the airlines can have these "open" discussions in their earnings calls, isn't it? We've been following the commentary over on Dennis Schaal's blog but this was too rich to pass up without a few thoughts of our own!

Of note, DL stated that "TMCs have an important role to play" and seemed to imply that their main target was the OTAs particularly when DL described the "value we provide vs. others" online. Maybe so, Orbitz's Price Assurance which offers consumers a refund when fares decline seems like a pretty good value. The same can be said for the multitude of air+hotel packaging options that the OTAs provide to consumers. And many consumers would also vote Orbitz's TLC in-route support to be far superior to many airline's offerings. And multiple airlines? Try booking a multi-carrier trip on Delta.com or Continental.com. OTAs are all about offering consumers choices and comparison opportunities - things they do quite well.

More interesting, however, was the suggestion that "OTAs should pay for [airline] content the way they do for hotels" Hmmmm. Obviously, someone at Delta has not taken a quick look at hotel distribution costs - nor drivers of OTA profitability. Newsflash: OTAs don't make any money selling airline tickets! They make it selling hotels. And they don't pay hotels - quite the opposite. Can you imagine the horror if someone at Delta knew that many chains are paying Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz in the mid-teens for distribution? And what of independent hotels? Considerably more.

And finally, DL mentioned that Delta.com was driving ~ 37-38% of Delta's revenues - great news indeed. But they also estimated that the OTAs were providing in the area of 30% of Delta's revenues - wow is all we can say on that one.