The Wright Amendment compromise won't affect Southwest refusal to allow their inventory GDS wide and on third-party services. It is about control over how their available inventory is displayed and managing customer expectations.
When some travel sites were displaying SWA fares, they were comparing different fare types. Generally they were showing more expensive and less restricted SWA fares against less expensive and more restricted participant airline fares. This made SWA look like the more expensive airline, and didn't inform customers they could get a cheaper rate going to SWA directly.
Alternatively if one service becomes a large enough portion of your sales, the extortion effect becomes possible. That service could start demanding a referral fee or a higher fee than they were already receiving. If you train your customers to go to your own distribution channel, you can prevent the threat of that possibility.
Finally southwest.com is an award winning site for clarity and ease of use, and their 800 number is always answered by humans and not voice response robots. Many of these other services have usability problems. Not all customers are savvy enough to recognize the difference and blame the third party. Customers could come to think of your company as providing this sub-standard service and negatively affect your brand image.
It is in Southwest's interest to maintain tight control of their distribution channels.
So, Gebhart, just how long have you worked for Southwest, anyway?
You are right, I am an employee (been one for several years.) However I don't work in the distribution department, and my comments didn't come from internal company communications. I repeated what I have read in business and aviation industry publications of interviews with Southwest leaders.
Points well taken. But as someone who flies almost exclusively for vacation/pleasure, and almost never for business, if Southwest really wants to live up to its motto of customer service for non-business travelers, it will tweak its fare schedule (I've flown Southwest twice, once since moving to Dallas, and bought that flight online) to make it able for it to be listed on the major travel websites.
Let's face it (and I'm going to do a follow-up blog post about this) I want to be able to find all my flights under one roof. With Wright eventually moved out of the way, if Southwest doesn't want to offer that type of customer service, I'd be less likely to fly it eight years from now.
Oh, and I wrote two pro-repeal columns for my newspaper group, so when I say it's a third of a loaf, over some of these issues, I'm an idealist who thinks we could do better.
Gebhart, here’s my detailed reply in a new blog post. I’ll be honest, based on a thorough read of your initial post and my analysis of it, you probably won’t like this post a lot.
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