A user-friendly search engine with the most current information ... the engine is easy to use, and the results are ranked with the lowest fares first. Travel sites are proliferating on the Web like strip malls in suburbia, but there''s one whose name you should remember. Expected to reinvent the online fare-finding wheel when it launches in June. It aims to search every available flight combination for travelers, giving them the choice of cut-rate fares, fewest legs on a trip and most convenient departure times. This could radically alter an industry in which customers surf numerous sites before making a purchase.

Our agreements not only contain no provision barring any airline from making any fare available through any channel, they contain an affirmative non-exclusivity provision that makes it explicit that no airline is prevented from making any fare it chooses available through any channel it chooses. Our agreement contains a non-discrimination clause by which those airlines that will receive the indirect discount on the CRS booking fee agree in return to make available on any fare they publish and make available to the general public through any other channel. But that of course does not preclude them from offering any fare through any other channel.

Airlines make nearly all their fares that are available to the general public available through all channels, from full fare down to their most heavily discounted fares. Any normal fare, made available months in advance in the normal way, is made available through all channels. Web fares, however, are different than normal fares. They typically constitute less than one tenth of 1% of the fares an airline offers, and are normally made available only a few days before flight time, and only on flights which have an unusually high number of empty seats. Web fares thus are seldom available, are unpredictable, and are offered at very low prices.

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