American and Travelport bury the hatchet with new GDS deal

American Airlines and GDS-owner Travelport have signed a new distribution agreement and dropped their competing legal claims in the US.

American Airlines and GDS-owner Travelport have signed a new distribution agreement and dropped their competing legal claims in the US.

In a joint statement today, American Airlines and Travelport announced they had agreed a long-term, global distribution deal.

The deal guarantees Travelport clients access to the carrier’s full content alongside the ability to sell ancillary products and services.

The companies have been locked in a sometimes acrimonious legal battle since 2011 over American’s development of its own direct-connect distribution system.

The agreement allows the pair to use “both Travelport’s Universal API technology and American’s XML-based direct connect interface to deliver additional capabilities to Travelport subscribers”.

Agents using the Travelport GDSs, Worldspan and Galileo, will be able to sell American’s newly introduced Main Cabin Extra seats – the equivalent of premium economy.

American Airlines global sales vice-president Derek DeCross said: “Travelport deserves praise for working with American to create a solution that can display all our product options to agents in a transparent, customer-friendly way that also clearly differentiates American’s products from other airlines.”

Travelport vice-president and general manager of global distribution sales and service Dan Westbrook said, “All of our subscribers will continue to access American’s full content, while American can merchandise its full line of products through Travelport.”

The statement said: “American and Travelport resolved all litigation between themselves.”

The pair gave no further details, pending a review and approval by the US court presiding over the restructuring of AMR Corporation – American’s parent company.

AMR is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US.