Tale of a travel-site tiff

August 05, 2008 | Online Travel

Amazing how established companies not only attack Web sites that send business their way, but do so when they need all the help they can get. Enter the case of American Airlines vs. Kayak/Sidestep.

American is yanking its flight listings from Kayak, a travel-search engine, effective Friday. Its beef with Kayak, as reported at numerous sites, centers on Kayak’s practice of displaying fares from both airlines and online travel agents such as Orbitz and CheapTickets.

Kayak says that American asked it to remove those alternate sources from its flights’ listings; Kyak refused, and so starting tomorrow, the search engine will only list online travel agents’ prices for AA flights.

Why is this dumb for AA? Because Kayak’s flight-search engine is so far superior to anything at its site—or any other airline’s. See, for example, how Kayak compares to American’s AA.com site in a search for flights leaving from Washington to San Francisco over Labor Day weekend.

Get the full story at The Washington Post, and USA TODAY

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