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Airline companies would offer the same protection that's offered today. It would be in the arrangements we'd have with that airline. Those low cost air tickets would either be guaranteed, or there would be that possibility of overbooking. But it would be the same as it is today. There is no protection as such against overbooking.

You tried this once before with World Airways, and then you stopped. What happened there? Incidentally, explain to us, how could World Airways do this before this new rule came into effect? At the time, World was not part of the Air Traffic Conference. They were an independent, and they had a route coast to coast. It was an experiment for low cost air tickets, an experiment for them; and in two and a half weeks we did sell 117,000 tickets.

People did come to us. Subsequently there was a DC-10 closedown of World, and there was a long strike. And we just never came back. We felt at that time these hearings were about to be joined. We felt that was the route for us to take.

The only thing I could say on that would be that our decision does allow the airlines some freedom to pick whoever they want to sell their tickets, and so if the travel agents decided individually -- not collusively, but individually, but as a group -- to book around an airline, this -- our decision would allow them the freedom to find some alternate source to sell their tickets. So the airline is not totally dependent on travel agents to sell their ticket if for some reason the travel agents sour on a particular airline.

Does the CAB have any evidence that travel agents have ever done that -- boycotted -- well, there was some suggestion of travel agents doing that to Braniff, for instance, when the word got out that Braniff was having its financial problems. Has CAB looked into that? I don't think anybody has to worry about the financial aspects of this because the airlines are not going to allow anybody to sell their tickets if they aren't guaranteed positively they're going to get their money for the sale of those tickets.

World Airways and Braniff and the power that the travel agents have to exert pressure on airlines. Let's say ABC Airlines is interested in taking up the freedom of this new rule, and decides to go talk to Mr. Schmitt at Ticketron.