Major airlines in earnest now are filing directly into the Airline Tariff Publishing Company fare rules and formulae that generate negotiated fares for corporate clients, taking responsibility—and liability—away from travel management companies that traditionally apply corporate discounts at the point of sale. Continental, Delta and Northwest airlines have been the most aggressive, already having transitioned nearly all accounts to the newer process.
In addition to filing their standard published fares, the airlines increasingly are filing into ATPCo's categories 25 and 35 client-specific discount terms and fixed fares
(BTN, Aug. 12, 2002). The result, according to the airlines, is a reduction in travel agency debit memos and a more accurate and expedited process, a view shared by travel managers.
"Over time, it became a requirement as deals were negotiated or renegotiated," said Scott Slater, Delta general manager for business development and corporate programs. "When we file fares and discounts, we are now 100 percent sure they are correct. There won't be any dilution from a misfiled agreement."
Until Amadeus joins the other three primary global distribution system providers in accepting the more robust ATPCo feeds
(BTN, May 12, 2003), isolated gaps will remain. For example, fares for certain international itineraries—notably those that involve carriers using Amadeus—still must be handled through the traditional process. An Amadeus spokesperson said full acceptance of the more robust ATPCo feeds should be ready by mid-May.
Meanwhile, there may be variation in how each GDS handles the ATPCo feeds. "Each GDS tries to adhere to the industry standards, but the same ATPCo rule coding may affect each system differently," said Nancy Thomas, senior staff planner in the United Airlines North America sales group. "We quality control our filings so the information in the rules should be correct. However, we ask the agents to verify the accuracy of the fare quotes. Problems do occur."
For that reason, among others, some travel managers still rely on GDS audits to ensure proper rate loading. "We do monthly audits on any new fare initiatives to make sure everything is programmed correctly," said Kevin Iwamoto, global airline and car rental supply manager at Hewlett-Packard. "We have discovered incomplete programming and errors."
So has Topaz International, a Portland, Ore.-based airfare auditing company. "We do find errors on all sides of the equation in terms of how discounts are calculated," said Topaz president Brad Seitz. "More recently, in some cases, airlines that have been trying to interpret their own contracts have been wrong." This complicates matters for corporate travel managers, especially given that some airlines rely on travel management companies to double-check their filings and some do not.
Some sources also suggested challenges for corporate booking tools in that their coding limits their ability to display all of a company's negotiated fares, though others insisted most major problems largely have been resolved.
Meanwhile, Orbitz Supplier Link technology, designed to bypass the GDSs, does not take in category 25 and 35 fare filings, limiting its utility in the corporate market
(see story).Despite those hurdles, direct carrier filing into ATPCo is a growing trend, with perceived benefits for buyer and seller. "In the past, I would have to get my agency involved," Iwamoto said. "This is a cost savings for me because my agency, or whoever I outsource fare filing to, no longer has the burden. When the airline takes on the responsibility, timeliness improves dramatically and hopefully accuracy is guaranteed."
"In a changing world, where contracts change a lot, we take on the responsibility to manage the complexity," Slater said.
Though not as far along as Continental, Delta and Northwest, other majors are adopting automated fare filings for corporate clients. "We are in the transition, slowly but surely, and it may not work as quickly as every corporate customer would like," said Frank Morogiello, American Airlines vice president of global accounts, "but we think everybody eventually will gravitate toward this process."
Several airline executives said direct fare filing has become quite common in requests for proposals sent out by corporations. "It has been extremely well received by corporate customers," said Jina Sanone, Northwest manager of corporate programs within the sales group. "They and their travel agencies want us to do this and we want to do it."
"It shifts the workload," Thomas said. "Agencies now have more time to concentrate on the other things they do."
Despite dedicating internal resources to handle ATPCo filings, airlines at this point do not charge fees to clients for this service.
A next step is to bring automated fare filings global. Companies with domestic alliance deals should have all fares filed directly—assuming each partner carrier involved executes its own fare filing—but more work is needed to handle complex international contracts with various points of sale.