Dear Travel Professional,
In an effort to reduce distribution costs and to be more consistent with industry practices, AA is revising its GDS booking policy.
In today's environment, AA is charged a fee by a GDS for each instance when an Agent books any AA segment. Inactive segments that are not removed from PNRs increase our distribution costs. Therefore, Agencies must cancel all inactive PNR segments 24 hours before a flight's departure.
Please refer to the text below (available online at the following link) for a detailed explanation of our policy on inactive segments.
Beginning with bookings made on or after March 1, 2008, AA will audit all PNR transactions to identify non-compliant practices regarding inactive segments. As policy violations are identified, AA will issue a monthly debit memo to recover the cost of unproductive bookings at USD $3.50 per segment plus a USD $50.00 administrative service fee.
Compliance with our inactive segment policy will reduce unnecessary and unproductive distribution costs. We thank you for your cooperation in adhering to our booking policies.
Thank you for your continued support of American Airlines.
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American Airlines GDS Booking Fee Monitoring Policy
American Airlines currently participates in all major GDS systems. As part of our participation, we pay segment fees for travel agent bookings. Billable activity includes sell, cancel, waitlist, desire, change, schedule change, etc.
While the following initiatives and policies are in support of our ongoing effort to monitor and control our GDS costs, they will also improve your work environment by eliminating non-productive activity, allowing your agents to work better and work smarter.
Cost Control Initiatives
Waitlist Reduction - AA has reduced waitlist ceilings and eliminated waitlist in most discount classes of service. This modification provides a waitlist product that allows you to waitlist inventory that has the most potential of clearing.
Schedule Change Notification - Notification for minor time changes has been reduced, eliminating unnecessary queue and telephone activity.
Claim PNR - Allows you to claim bookings made by American Airlines, eliminating the need to create additional active or passive bookings. This is a time saver for your agents.
Policies
Duplicate Bookings - AA will monitor booking activity at the travel agent level in order to identify duplicate bookings. American Airlines definition of a duplicate booking is the use of the same passenger name for an additional flight for the same market, date, IATA number, regardless of flight number, class of service or status code. You should never book duplicate space, as this is a waste of your time and a loss to us.
Fictitious Bookings - Fictitious bookings could include those with name field items that read test / traveler / tourist or a surname with fictitious initials, i.e. A / B / C / D / E. Please avoid the practice of holding space under speculative passenger names. We will monitor booking activity at the travel agent level in order to identify fictitious bookings.
GDS Conversions - Agencies will be responsible for payment of booking fees associated with conversion to a new GDS.
Passive PNR - Claim PNR eliminates the need for Passive PNRs. Passive PNRs will be subject to the unproductive segment fees
Schedule Change - AA is billed for both the original WK and replacement SC segment and only receives credit if the WK or WL segment is canceled. When working your schedule change queue, you must cancel these WK / WL segments.
Inactive Segments - Agencies must cancel unnecessary segments with status codes of DL, DS, HX, IX, MM, RM, UC, UN, US, UU, WK and WL at least 24 hours prior to flight departure.
Failure to comply with these policies may result in debit memo issuance to the agency for booking infractions in order to offset the costs incurred by American Airlines and an administrative service fee will be added.
In addition to these policies, you can assist us in controlling booking fee costs by remembering that every time you action an air segment there is a charge. Other requirements and suggestions that will keep booking fee costs down and save you time are:
1. Eliminate excessive cancel and rebook activity by ticketing within the time limit specified in the fare rule.
2. When using low fare products, complete the booking and low fare entry in one transaction.
3. For locations with multiple GDS, book and ticket in the same system.
4. PNR clean up - Agents must cancel unnecessary segments with status codes of HX, UC, UN, WL, WK, NO, US, DS, DL, IX, MM, RM and UU. This will also help in reading, pricing and ticketing the PNR.
5. Do not book air segments for administrative reasons. Use auxiliary segments whenever possible.
6. Limit the use of open segments. Your passenger will be better served being confirmed.
7. Avoid using Passive PNRs and instead use Claim PNR.
8. Eliminate the practice of holding speculative space under fictitious names.
Working within our initiatives, policy changes and suggestions will improve your overall productivity and support our cost control effort.
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