Imagine that an inventor has come up with a really cool Thingamajig, something that customers will be happy to buy. But the Thingamajig has a weird shape. It doesn’t fit easily onto retailers’ shelves. The retailers are itching to get their hands on it, but the guys who make the shelves will need to adapt them.

The shelf guys say, “If all of the 400 inventors out there come up with Thingamajigs in different shapes, we’ll have to adapt the shelves 400 times unless we bring some sort of order to this process.”

So the inventor says, “Phooey on you. I’m only going to allow retailers to sell my Thingamajig if they use my specially designed shelf. Everyone else is going to get cut off.”

The retailers are caught in the middle. They say, “We can’t get specially designed shelves for all the different Thingamajigs. We’ll have chaos. It will complicate our workflow. Can’t you please work with the shelf guys to figure this out?”

This tale is, of course, a grossly oversimplified version of what is going on with American Airlines, the GDS companies and travel management companies. Orbitz is the first retailer to let it be known that American has said it will pull its inventory from Orbitz websites effective Dec. 1.

It will be all too easy to vilify American Airlines for these tactics. They seem a tad heavy-handed. But, as is usually the case, there are two sides to this story. In fact, there are several sides. This is a story with a lot of moving parts, and there is a lot that we who observe these events don’t know.

We don’t know, for example, what kind of development costs are involved in linking to American through its XML connection. We don’t know if American’s direct connection is “unproven technology,” as one observer suggested. We also don’t know what the GDS companies want from airlines in exchange for accommodating their ancillary products.

Here’s what we do know: It has been nearly five years since Air Canada pulled its Tango fares from GDSs out of frustration with their inability to display the carrier’s fare families, a la carte pricing and other products that at the time were quite ground-breaking. In the intervening years, GDS companies have introduced new features that indicate some awareness that all airlines and airline services are not exactly alike. But it’s been painfully slow in coming.

Now American wants its distribution channels to address the fact that all customers are not exactly alike. It wants to present tailored offers to its passengers based on their preferences, the agreements between American and their employers, their overall value to the airline and other factors.

There are indications that GDSs are not lagging so far behind on this one. Speaking at the Amadeus Horizons conference last month, David Doctor, director of airline and travel agency distribution, said the Amadeus Altéa Inventory module can re-accommodate passengers according to their value to the airline. Altéa is the passenger services system, not the GDS, but Amadeus obviously has given the issue of customer segmentation some thought.

Travelport, meanwhile, responded to the American-Orbitz flap with a detailed statement that said, among other things, that “Travelport is ready, willing and able to work with AA to deliver the customization AA is talking about.” It said the Travelport Universal Desktop, slated for a broad rollout next year, “solves for individual customization and aggregation of new content not historically available within the GDS, while creating an efficient desktop for travel agents that also allows suppliers to customize and differentiate their content.” Travelport said it would be “pleased to work with American Airlines to deliver these products to our agency customers, [but] AA apparently intends to limit all GDS agencies’ access to full content such as low fares and ancillary services based solely upon AA’s own criteria.”

Farelogix has a vested interest in the outcome of this battle, given that it has developed a platform that TMCs can use to connect with American and other airlines that choose to follow a similar path. But in its comments to the Transportation Department regarding proposed new requirements of transparency for ancillary fees in all channels, it also made a point that should not be ignored:

“Under the current GDS distribution model, the GDS ‘controls’ the price and product that is generated and offered to the consumer in what is often referred to as an ‘anonymous traveler’ sale, where the airline is unaware of who the traveler is before the airline product is offered and sold. Indeed, the GDSs can and do control what airline product features they offer in any market. “

If you think GDSs don’t exert control, think about how Sabre responded to Air Canada’s withdrawal of Tango fares: It restricted the display of all Air Canada business class and full economy fares in the U.S.

In Farelogix’ opinion, “The reluctance to give up this pricing control is what severely limits the options that can be presented to consumers via the travel agency GDS-powered channel. GDSs view this control as key to preserving their market power over agencies and airlines, even though the anonymous selling process is a dated model and is no longer relevant to either the airlines or the consumers.”

Here’s something we do know: There are no good guys or bad guys in this story. It’s business, and businesses will always push as hard as they can to get what they want. But some do it with a defter touch than others.

Read about Norwegian Cruise Line’s focus on direct distribution in the November 8 issue of TTU.