Seems Travelport and American Airlines which have been battling in court for nearly two years have settled their dispute and have signed a new global distribution agreement.
The release, which did not go into details of the dispute, stated “the terms of the settlement agreement require review and approval by the court presiding over AMR Corporation’s restructuring”.
Travelport owns global distribution systems, Galileo and Worldspan, and 48% ofOrbitz. American had accused Travelport of antitrust violations in how Travelport handled American’s products.
The new distribution agreement, in addition to enabling continued access to the full content of flights marketed by American Airlines, also gives Travelport access to American’s other products and services.
The release said that Travelport and American plan to use both Travelport’s Universal API technology and American’s XML-based direct connect interface to deliver additional capabilities to Travelport subscribers, including the ability to sell American’s newly-introduced Main Cabin Extra seating product.
“Travelport deserves praise for working with American to create a solution that can display all of our product options to travel agents in a transparent, customer-friendly way that also clearly differentiates American’s products from other airlines,” said Derek DeCross, vice president of global sales for American Airlines.
Dan Westbrook, vice president and general manager of Global Distribution Sales and Service, Travelport, said, “American is an industry leader, and the perfect partner with which to build upon Travelport’s airline partnership approach to merchandizing, optional ancillary sales and product differentiation.
“All of our subscribers will continue to access American’s full content, while American can merchandize its full line of products through Travelport, providing consumers and travelers a transparent marketplace and the ability to shop and book all services at their channel of choice.”
At the same time, Travelport announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2012.
Commenting on the company’s performance, Gordon Wilson, President and CEO of Travelport, said: “Travelport’s strategic growth plans continue to gain momentum. We broadened our travel content, improved our point of sale platform delivery, grew our payments business and developed greater distribution capabilities for ancillary products and services. Our key underlying business performance indicators of RevPas and Gross Margin have improved every quarter of this year compared to 2011.”
Financial Highlights for Fourth Quarter 2012
(in $ millions)
|
Q4 2012 |
Q4 2011 |
Change |
% Change |
|||||||
| Net Revenue |
457 |
465 |
(8) |
(2) |
||||||
| Operating (Loss) Income |
(17) |
4 |
(21) |
* |
||||||
| EBITDA |
41 |
62 |
(21) |
(34) |
||||||
| Adjusted EBITDA |
89 |
106 |
(17) |
(16) |
||||||
|
* Not meaningful |
Financial Highlights for the Full Year 2012
(in $ millions)
|
2012 |
2011 |
Change |
% Change |
|||||||
| Net Revenue |
2,002 |
2,035 |
(33) |
(2) |
||||||
| Operating Income |
138 |
200 |
(62) |
(31) |
||||||
| EBITDA |
371 |
427 |
(56) |
(13) |
||||||
| Adjusted EBITDA |
455 |
507 |
(52) |
(10) |
||||||
Travelport RevPas increased 3% to $5.28 for the full year 2012. The loss of the MSA with United Airlines contributed approximately $69 million to the decline in net revenue and $50 million to the decline in each of operating income, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA in 2012 compared to 2011. Excluding the impact of this loss, net revenue for 2012 increased $36 million from 2011, and operating income, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA declined by $12 million, $6 million and $2 million respectively, compared to 2011. The average rate of agency commissions increased 1% for the full year 2012.
