Amadeus and United extend partnership – with a twist


United Airlines and Amadeus, one of the major Global Distribution Systems, signed an agreement to extend the availability of United fare and inventory data for Amadeus subscribers into 2013. This deal will allow travel agents using the Amadeus system to continue to sell seats to their customers.

Of particular note in the announcement, however, is not simply that the partnership was extended but that it was improved as well. Starting in mid-2012 Amadeus-based agents will not only be able to sell regular inventory on United flights but they will also be able to sell the company’s Economy Plus seating. Economy Plus is one of many ancillary services that United makes available for purchase and this deal represents the airline working with the GDS company to make such an ancillary purchase available via the GDS rather than solely directly via a Direct sales model.

With more and more airlines making the push to bring such ancillary sales wholly into the Direct model it is rather refreshing to see at least one company bucking that trend and working with their GDS partners to make the options available in a centralized and transparent manner. It will be interesting to see what other options flow into this relationship over the coming months and years.

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Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

3 Comments

  1. Hi, just completed my B.E. and now I am interested in going for GDS online training and that too in airlines. So, basically I am confused about certain things as which I came across that there are cetain different GDS like amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and some others. I found out that above are the one in demand and so just came across this online training http://www.wiziq.com/course/1610-amadeus-airlines-reservations-and-pnr-management-course-1 and was wondering as this online training will help me to prepare of I have to go for any other Manual training. Kindly provide some light on this too! would really be thankful for your comments.

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