Mark Pestronk
Q: Several years ago, hackers managed to obtain one of my employees' GDS login and issued a bunch of tickets over a weekend for one-way flights from West Africa to Europe during that weekend, when no one was at our agency. All the tickets were on one carrier, which I'll call Carrier A. When we refused to pay the debit memos, Carrier A lifted its plate (i.e., withdrew its appointment).
That was OK with us, since we never issued tickets on Carrier A anyway. However, shortly thereafter, Carrier B, from which we have never received a debit memo, lifted its plate, too. We have never received an explanation from Carrier B, but we assume that it had something to do with Carrier A's decision. How did Carrier B find out about Carrier A's action? Does Carrier B owe us an explanation? Are Carriers A and B allowed to collude in this way? Do we have any legal recourse against Carrier B?
A: Under the ARC agreement, any carrier has the absolute right to withdraw its appointment at any time.
Section 11.5 of the ARC Agent Reporting Agreement unequivocally states that, "Carrier may terminate agent's appointment at any time with written notice." No reason needs to be given.
Nothing in the agreement requires the carrier to notify ARC of its decision, but if the carrier does so, "ARC will provide notice to system providers to inhibit issuance of ARC traffic documents on that carrier upon termination by the carrier of an agent's ... appointment." The "system providers" are the GDS vendors.
The agreement does not provide for ARC to notify the other carriers, so I don't know how Carrier B found out. Either ARC sent out a bulletin to all carriers in the ARC reporting system (which is unlikely because ARC does not like to get involved in communications that may result in suits for collusion) or Carrier A simply notified all the other carriers or a subset of carriers that Carrier A thinks would want to be notified.
What you describe is not actually collusion, as there is no evidence of an agreement between the carriers.
If Carrier A notified Carrier B, and then Carrier B made its own decision, you could not prove that the carriers agreed to take action against you.
The exception would be the case where A and B agreed in advance that if one of them withdrew an appointment, the other would do likewise. In that case, the standing agreement would be evidence of collusion against your agency, which is a violation of the antitrust laws.
Such a suit would take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Otherwise, I am afraid that you have no legal recourse against Carrier B.
My advice is to use your industry contacts to get the name of Carrier B's decision makers and then to lobby by letter, email and phone, explaining your innocence. Such a course could take a long time, but it has worked for other agencies.
If Carrier B decides to reappoint you, it may condition its decision on your obtaining a letter of credit or the like in favor of Carrier B.