American Airlines is
pulling its flight listings from Kayak.com, the travel site based in Concord, MA and Norwalk, CT.
American, which apparently knows that I've bought tickets from the airline by clicking through from Kayak, sent me an e-mail last night. The subject was: "American Airlines Ends Relationship With Kayak."
I think this will hurt American a tiny bit, since some travelers are accustomed to starting their airfare searches at Kayak, which until now has been comprehensive.
But I think it will hurt Kayak a lot, since American is the #2 airline in terms of domestic passengers carried, and #7 in terms of international, according to Wikipedia. Kayak is really not usable without American prices in the database. As of today, Kayak doesn't show American's fares, but it does offer an "Info" link that takes you to CheapTickets.com, which then shows you the fares. Not all that useful for a comparison-shopping site...
There's no news about the change on Kayak's blog,
Kayak posted a statement on their blog, but the search results presented to travelers don't make what's going on very clear.
(Here's a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog post about the spat.)
Labels: American Airlines, Kayak, travel