December 6, 2004
From now on, Northwest Airlines says it will go it alone when it comes to selling tickets to passengers over the Internet. The airline has announced it is ending its relationship with Priceline.com and will no longer allow the travel Web site to sell seats on Northwest.
At a time when travel-oriented search engines are sending Web surfers directly to airline ticket sites, Priceline may have become an anachronism. Northwest said Priceline.com's costs were too high and it could save money by selling the same tickets through its own Web site at nwa.com.
Northwest joins a growing list of airlines that have decided to sell their own tickets through their own Web sites, without the cost of a middleman. So far, sites like Priceline say they haven't felt the impact. The company said it didn't make all that much on sales of Northwest tickets, and Priceline has recently expanded its travel business in the area of hotels and rental cars.
Priceline.com was one of the early players in online travel, starting out as a "name your fare" airline ticket service. Passengers post their desired destination and basically bid on unsold seats, listing the maximum price they're willing to spend. Priceline connects the traveler with an airline that accepts their offer.
Increasingly air travelers are finding the flights they want at the price they want on low fare airlines like Southwest, Jet Blue and Independence Air, without the uncertainty of bidding on a seat on one of the major carriers, which are more likely to fly with half empty planes.
