Cheapest Airlines

Still Some Affordable Airlines In Existence

They would be very slow to move and be very sure about what they're doing, because the risks of interfering with the orderly marketing of cheapest airlines as it exists today are quite high. I hear all of these stories about fear of agents and boycotts and the like, and I really don't think it's appropriate at this point to go into a great many details, but these matters were, by and large, addressed in the marketing case.

We did an unrebutted analysis that showed conclusively that the cheapest airlines plan to change the basis of paying travel agents did not result in a boycott. As far as the Frontier effort to cut commissions, that failed because the other carriers -- at least a great many of them, the majority -- elected not to go along.

The whole matter was over with in a few weeks. I doubt seriously that Frontier would have even known what was happening to its sales picture in the period of time of -- I can see why everyone is induced to suggest the travel agents, with 60% of the sales, exert this undue influence, but the fact of the matter is that the industry acquires that market share because consumers have no other place to turn where they can get comprehensive service and information about fares and flights in the deregulated marketplace that the government has produced.

Noting the confusion caused by disruption of flights by financially troubled Continental Airlines, travel agents asked Congress on Tuesday to keep the Civil Aeronautics Board from deregulating the sale of airline tickets.

Richard Knote, president of the American Society of Travel Agents, told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on aviation that because of the current system, "many airlines were willing to honor the tickets of Continental. This won't be true in the future."

Air passenger representatives testified that deregulation would result in lower ticket prices by eliminating some of the costs that airlines build into their fares to cover the 10 percent they pay travel agents.

Without deregulation, airlines and their approved travel agents have an exclusive right to sell tickets. Under the CAB's proposed deregulation plan, the subcommittee was told, travelers could buy airline tickets at a department store.

"That is apparently what the public wants, then why should the Congress be passing a law making it illegal?" asked Cornish F. Hitchcock, legal director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project.