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Technology Stocks : Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert Rose who wrote (1337)	5/16/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: Tom Hua	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2743

Rob, here it is. Airlines Take Risk With Priceline.com, Crandall Says (Update1) (Closes share prices.) Chicago, May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Airlines that sell tickets through Priceline.com Inc., an Internet retailer, are cannibalizing their own sales, said Robert Crandall, the former chief executive of American Airlines parent AMR Corp. Priceline.com lets customers submit bids for airline tickets and hotel rooms through the Internet. It has relationships with 18 airlines but not with UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and American, the two largest carriers. ''I don't know why any airline would choose to make seats available off-tariff,'' Crandall said after a speech in Chicago at a conference about travel and the Internet. ''The whole notion of undercutting the tariff doesn't make any business sense.'' Major U.S. airlines, including United and American, all have revenue-management systems that allow the companies to sell a mix of full-fare and discount tickets that almost always ensures a profitable flight. By further discounting seats sold through companies such as Priceline.com, the airlines risk losing demand for regular fare tickets, Crandall said. ''If you start selling $90 seats,'' everyone's going to want $90 seats, AMR's former chairman said. Among the airlines working with Priceline.com are Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp., the third- and fourth- biggest U.S. carriers. Priceline.com fell 4 1/2 to 121 1/2 and AMR fell 5/16 to 74. Regards, Tom