Worldspan and three airlines are urging the Transportation Department
to suspend its CRS rules or let them expire altogether.

Commenting on a DOT proposal to extend and later modify the rules, Worldspan
suggested instead a “temporary, experimental” suspension of at least two years.

Delta
endorsed that view, while Northwest
and United said the rules should be done away with entirely.

Worldspan said a suspension would “give the market the opportunity to answer the two overriding questions facing the department: Are the regulations still needed and, if so, in what form?”

Delta, a part-owner of Worldspan filed a comment endorsing that suggestion, while its partner Northwest said, “unsetting the CRS rules in their entirety would serve competition and the public interest better than continuing to extend the rules.”

United
said the rules no longer have “any basis in law or policy” because of the growth of the Internet and fundamental changes in the ownership of the major systems.

When the rules were adopted in the mid-1980s, Sabre
and Apollo
were wholly owned by American
and United and were the dominant U.S. systems. Now, neither Sabre now Galileo
has any airline ownership, and multiple airlines own Worldspan and Amadeus
.

 

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