TRAVEL agents are now unable to book Finnair flights through the Sabre GDS, after a failure to reach a deal over a replacement of the current Full Content Agreement between the carrier and the technology company.
An industry update issued overnight confirmed Finnair and Sabre have been negotiating over the airline’s desire to shift to a model of “pricing and distribution freedom in direct channels, and content differentiation in indirect channels”.
“As we have not yet reached an agreement, Sabre has removed Finnair content (flight inventory, flight prices etc) from Sabre and Abacus GDSs,” according to AY Regional Manager Australia, Arnaud Michelin.
The removal is in all markets worldwide apart from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
“Apart from these exclusion markets this means that travel agents cannot book anymore Finnair flights or ancillary products from Sabre and Abacus GDSs,” Michelin added, apologising for the inconvenience to agents.
He said Finnair was working to resolve the issue with Sabre, and continued to distribute through alternative platforms including Amadeus, Travelport and Travelsky as well as aggregators such as Travelfusion and PKFare and via direct NDC connections.
Ironically Finnair previously had a close partnership with Sabre as part of the GDS firm’s “Beyond NDC” program (TD 18 Sep 2018).
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Source: traveldaily