Cheap Air Travel

Cheap Air Travel Is A Commodity These Days Of Skyrocketing Fuel Costs

If you're asking me if they have supported it publicly, I think there's very little evidence of that. I think there's probably an explanation for that, too. The agent, other than the airline, is the only person that can market the ticket, and I would think an airline would be reluctant under those circumstances to support the deregulation of cheap air travel.

The fact that it's official doesn't change the fact that the airlines' distribution system is still linked very closely with the travel agent. I would be very surprised if any airline took a very high profile in the very short term on distributing tickets in other ways for cheap air travel. I think it will evolve over time. I'd be very surprised to see the first person tie the bell around the cat's neck very quickly.

They've got to negotiate, for example, whether it be with Ticketron or someone else, there would have to be a negotiation, and I think those negotiations will go on. And I'd be surprised if some of those negotiations haven't already gone on. But I think the airlines will be reluctant, and I think for very good reason, to go public with that until they're sure they have something in hand that's viable.

It is likely that this could attract the new smaller airlines that emerged from deregulation rather than the big established airlines in order -- with the idea in their mind, perhaps, that this would be a way to increase ticket sales.

The number that is commonly used for the percentage of airline tickets that are sold through agents is something like 60% or higher. I believe for Southwest Airlines -- which is not quite a new entrant, but it's been in business a little over 12 years now, and by most standards it's fairly new -- or People Express, their penetration, I believe, is somewhere around 20 or 25 percent. So in fact they are not booking nearly as large a percentage of air seats through agents as the conventional carriers.

They'd have less to lose and this new arrangement would be more attractive to them. They might have more options, and I think there's in a sense a disincentive for a travel agent to sell a ticket on People Express, because they are a discounter. And since the ticket price -- I'm sorry, the agent commission, is based on a percentage of ticket price, there is less incentive for the agent to sell on that kind of an airline.