Airline Seeks Reservation Reform

American Airlines asked the government Thursday to halt an industry practice that often fools passengers into believing that they are booking nonstop or direct flights, when in fact they must stop and perhaps even change planes.

In an effort to gain better positioning in reservations computers, the airlines often list flights from a U.S. city to an overseas destination under one number, when in fact passengers who book those flights will be on more than one flight with different numbers.

By showing the flights under one number, the airlines can often have their routes appear higher on the computer screen than competitors’ flights. Also, since the individual legs of the flights are listed separately, the airlines end up filling up a greater portion of the computer screens, often bumping the competition out of the view of travel agents.

American acknowledged that it also sells tickets through what it called the “bogus listing,” but it said it has been reluctantly doing so for competitive reasons.

The “false direct flights” were instituted about a decade ago by Pan American World Airways and Trans World Airways, which used to dominate transatlantic travel but lacked strong domestic route structures to feed passengers to the flights into Europe, industry officials said.

American, the biggest U.S. airline, said it is now asking the Transportation Department to halt the practice to make the air travel business more honest, and an airline consumers group praised the move.

But some in the industry believe that American is actually trying to gain a competitive advantage.