Sabre Withdraws Suit Over Northwest's ACH Use

A U.S. district court last week dismissed at Sabre Inc.'s request a lawsuit against Northwest Airlines in which Sabre claimed the airline "stole" more than $1.5 million by "submitting false statement charges" via the Airline Clearing House.

The dispute stemmed from Sabre's hosting agreement to run and provide services for Midwest Airlines' internal reservation systems, through which alleged over-bookings took place for reservations made on Northwest flights through the codeshare agreement the carriers established in 2007. Northwest has no contractual agreement with Sabre for any internal reservation services.

According to the original complaint, filed Jan. 30 by Sabre in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas' Fort Worth Division, "In December 2008, Northwest expressed its displeasure with certain alleged over-bookings that purportedly resulted from its interline arrangement with Midwest. With little explanation and no justification, legal or otherwise, Northwest complained that Sabre was responsible for these over-bookings and threatened to charge Sabre $1,556,472 via the ACH. In mid-January 2009, Northwest followed through with its threat and misappropriated $1,556,472 from Sabre through an unprecedented use of the ACH as a self-help remedy for the collection of alleged—but wholly unsubstantiated—tort damages."

According to the lawsuit, "The ACH is able to achieve a high efficiency because all bills submitted through the ACH are automatically deducted from the billed party's ACH account."

According to a spokesperson from the Air Transport Association, which facilitates the ACH for U.S. carriers, "The ACH is a clearinghouse for interline billings between participating airlines and for some non-transportation expenses. It clears those billings; it does not evaluate them."

The ACH also handles billings for air freight interline agreements, the Universal Air Travel Plan and non-transportation billings for such shared support operations as baggage handling, according to the lawsuit.

Sabre would not comment on the lawsuit and airline officials did not respond to BTN's inquiries.