European Airlines ink booking deal

With a new deal struck between the major European carriers of SWISS and Lufthansa with Travelport GDS, bookings made by travel agents using the GDS system will have access to the full flight lists of the two European national carriers. This deal will run until 2011.

This also means that travel agencies in the Germanic speaking countries of Europe can reap benefits by signing on to the GDS service. Any participating agency in Austria, Lichtenstein, Germany or Switzerland will have access to the airlines’ preferred fares without being hit with a surcharge.

Lufthansa passenger Airlines’ vice president of marketing and sales Thierry Antinori says, . “The commercial terms of this new agreement allow us to offer participating travel agencies all of our fares without applying additional Preferred Fare fees until the end of 2011. This will give all travel agencies using Galileo or Worldspan long term peace of mind.”