Dont' you just love it when their own technology comes back to bite them in the ass? Mark Northwest straightens out circuitous routings (8/25/2003) By Andrew Compart WASHINGTON -- Northwest is trying to limit customer use of the circuitous routing and multi-airline itineraries that traveler Web sites, including the Orbitz site it helped create, sometimes display when a traveler is seeking the cheapest fare. Northwest described such bookings as "suspicious" in an internal memo it sent earlier this month to gate agents and other employees, telling them such itineraries are bad for customer service and airline revenue. It asked them to report such bookings to the airline. "We have seen an increase in the number of cases where we're selling our product in a fashion that is other than intended," Paul Dailey, managing director of domestic pricing, told TravelWeekly.com. "When you give customers perfect access to your information on the Web site, they sometimes are buying it in a fashion you didn't intend it to be sold." For example, he said, customers have booked a four-leg trip from Kansas City, Mo., to Indianapolis via Minneapolis; Columbus, Ohio; and Detroit, even though they could have done it with a single connection through Minneapolis or Detroit. In its memo to employees, Northwest said that itinerary was priced at $68, roundtrip. Dailey said such routings can turn up in searches on all the travel Web sites, including Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz. To prevent that from happening, Northwest recently placed restrictions on the number of connections that can be made, Dailey said. That's been done on every GDS that has the functionality, he added. The action doesn't prevent anyone who already booked the flight from traveling on the itinerary but is meant to prevent future bookings on the routing. In its memo to employees, Northwest said the circuitous routing can create two problems. One of them is the airline runs a greater risk of a customer losing luggage, missing a connection or being bumped. The second has to do with money. "With the increasing popularity of customers using the Internet to purchase travel, Northwest is finding that more passengers can discover low fares over nontraditional routings," the airline said. "In addition to the negative customer service issues created, these itineraries circumvent the integrity of Northwest's fare structure and negatively impact company revenue." In spite of such routings, travel Web site searches are not completely unrestricted. At Travelocity, for example, the default for searches is to show routings with no more than one stop, but a customer can request that it show routings with as many as three. Travelocity also places limits on how circuitous a routing can be, as it tries to show options that are "reasonably viable," Travelocity air product manager Ginny Mahl said. The site's statistics show most purchasers buy nonstop or one-stop flights, she added.