Today's partnership announcement between Amadeus and Anthropic is an urgent call to action for airlines to take control of their distribution destiny. Airlines need offensive AND - just as importantly - defensive capabilities in the technical and contractual domain with respect to Agenti AI. In other words, airlines need to be able to play, without being played. Imagine Anthropic or an incarnation of Claude becoming "just another" GDS subscriber: Depending on the airline's di

Smaller airlines often believe their ability to negotiate competitive GDS distribution agreements is limited. In reality, their bargaining power is quite significant, because their BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) is usually not much worse than the negotiated deal they already have. This is because for small airlines, the relative increase in GDS booking fees when moving from a (Full) content agreement to a baseline GDS parity agreement with the likes of A

Air Europa and Sabre have agreed on distribution terms and conditions ensuring continued Sabre access to Air Europa content from 1 July 2026, albeit with the same surcharge as will be applicable to tickets issued via Sabre’s GDS competitors Amadeus and Travelport. Earlier this year, when informing the trade about its GDS cost recovery surcharge effective 1 July 2026, the airline had said it would cease distributing via Sabre from the same date onward.

Airlines embarking on Modern Airline Retailing transformations are hoping to tap significant, additional revenue pools. Apart from evolving into better sellers of their own products and services, airlines are aiming to become retailers of third party products and services, such as hotels, cars and travel experiences. Airlines should ask themselves: Even if or when OOSD capability is fully in place, will travelers really be looking to airlines to become the orchestrators of t