Thursday, January 27, 2011

American Airlines Looks To Spur Bookings At Kayak

American Airlines, which is engaged in a full blown war with Bellevue-based Expedia, Orbitz, and Sabre over plans to force online travel sites to use its own booking systems, appears to be trying to spur travelers to instead buy tickets through competing site Kayak. In an email to Kayak users Thursday, Kayak said that American was offering users of the site an extra 10% off flights booked through the site, which said it was now "one of a few, select travel sites that include American Airlines flights in our search results". Over the last month, Expedia and Orbitz both have dropped listings of American over the airlines efforts to force those companies to use its Direct Connect technology; American is also battling Sabre, the online travel aggregator which previously provided access to American's fares to those online travel sites.