The latest cannonball in the three-way airline-GDS-travel agent war whistled into the US retail travel agent camp on April 16, when Travel Weekly reported that American Airlines ceo, Gerald Arpey’s dream scenario is one in which travel agents pay the airline for allowing them to sell its tickets.

Questioned about distribution-cost-savings, Arpey spoke of “reversing the flow” and said the airline believes it is paying too much in commission and booking fees, which “hinges on the use of technology and the competitive environment, because a lot of those commissions or overrides or booking fees are paid in order to stimulate traffic.I can see a day, and maybe I’m dreaming here, where those folks who are the intermediary between us and our customer have to pay for access to our product rather than us paying them to distribute our product.”

This is the War of the Distribution Costs. Airlines are staring down GDSs to get them to slash sector fees, and retail travel agencies are the battleground in which the war is being fought. First prize for airlines is if travel agents are driven totally online so airlines avoid GDS charges altogether. Some tactics in this conflict have been…

 *charging agencies for opt-in models for full content, *levying a (dollar-based) surcharge on bookings in GDSs which won’t strike a good enough deal with the airline, *now, the rather amazing idea that agents pay airlines for distribution.

But the practicalities of this last solution are not very clear…

*How would any carrier cope with the flood of direct bookings it would gain when the natural consequence of such radical action ensued (agents would immediately off-sell AA)?

*How would AA then service those customers (like when a delayed flight is cancelled, is AA going to get the passenger with an urgent meeting to attend, a seat on a competitor?).

*How expensive would it be for AA to replicate a travel agency-type distribution model of its own, around the globe, in which GDSs play no part and all bookings are online?  

*Who would want to go into one of these airline “agencies” knowing you can book only one airline and nothing else? No one. That’s why the travel agency model was invented.

 Yes, Mr Arpey, I think you are dreaming.