It looks like the end is in sight for the nearly two-year-old legal row between American Express and British Airways. A court document filed this month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said representation for the two travel vendors were present on March 8 at a pre-trial conference in New York and "if the case is not settled prior to April 2, 2004, the parties will submit a letter addressing the remaining issues and submit a proposed scheduling order."
Legal counsel for American Express and British Airways are to meet again on April 16. British Airways in June of 2002 stopped absorbing credit card merchant fees on U.K. corporate net fares, which sparked a legal battle when Amex threatened to terminate its merchant agreement with British Airways
(BTN, June 24, 2002).