US Airways announced that, effective immediately, US Airways reservations
and tickets are no longer available through the online travel site
expedia.com.
US Airways made this difficult but necessary decision after Expedia, with
no advance notification, raised the booking fee that it charges customers
to purchase US Airways tickets from $5 to $8.99. The Expedia booking fee
for other airlines remains at $5.

“We are disappointed that Expedia made a unilateral decision that has
forced our customers to pay a higher fee to purchase US Airways tickets,”
said US Airways Senior Vice President of Marketing and Planning B. Ben
Baldanza. “Despite Expedia being the world`s largest online travel
distributor, it is also our most expensive online distribution channel, so
it is not surprising that other airlines have decided not to sell through
Expedia. The combination of higher fees to consumers, higher costs for us,
and a discriminatory booking fee that applies only to our customers led to
this regrettable decision.”
Baldanza added that Expedia`s booking fees have gone up by approximately
80 percent and that doing business with Expedia at these disproportionate
rates is out of the question. “These tactics are designed to get us to pay
higher booking fees, unfortunately at the expense of our customers,” said
Baldanza. “The rate that Expedia wants to charge for US Airways bookings
is higher than that of any other carrier and it does not cost Expedia any
more to process a US Airways ticket. We cannot allow them to
differentiate, and we won`t.”

“What Expedia is doing underscores the enormous harm that display bias
presents to consumers and travel providers. By taking the action it did,
Expedia represented to the public that our fares were higher than those of
our competitors because Expedia factored in its higher fee for US Airways
tickets,” said Baldanza.

US Airways tickets already purchased through expedia.com will not be
impacted and customers will be able to travel as ticketed. For other
assistance with existing expedia.com-issued US Airways tickets and
itineraries, customers should call US Airways Reservations at
1-800-428-4322.

There remain other convenient choices for purchasing US Airways tickets
online, including through usairways.com, where there are no booking fees,
where low fares are always listed, and where customers earn bonus Dividend
Miles with their purchase.

US Airways is the nation`s seventh-largest airline, serving nearly 200
communities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin
America. US Airways, US Airways Shuttle, and the US Airways Express
carriers operate over 3,300 flights per day. For more information on US
Airways schedules and fares, visit usairways.com.

PRNewswire
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