The Sabre matter was an Antitrust dispute asserting Monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act and Restraint of Trade claims under Section 1 of that Act, between an airline and the operator of a global distribution system (“GDS”). A GDS is a two-sided transaction platform that intermediates between airlines and travel agents: airlines pay booking fees to the GDS, while the GDS pays incentives to travel agencies. Sabre operates the largest of the three U.S. GDS platforms, with a market share exceeding 50 percent.
The plaintiff, US Airways—which merged into American Airlines in 2013—alleged that Sabre used the “full content” provisions of its distribution contracts to entrench its dominance, suppress innovation, and extract supracompetitive booking fees. The 2022 proceeding was a retrial that followed an earlier 2016 jury verdict for US Airways that the Second Circuit vacated after the Supreme Court’s decision in Ohio v. American Express Co. (“Amex II”), which held that the relevant market for a two-sided transaction platform must include both sides of the platform. On remand, the GDS market was treated as two-sided as a matter of law, requiring US Airways to demonstrate net competitive harm across both the airline and travel-agent sides of the platform, a heavier evidentiary burden. Recoverable damages were confined to a narrow window from February 23, 2011 to October 30, 2012.
On behalf of Sabre, Professor Zmijewski, supported by Renee McMahon and Zawadi Lemayian, provided rebuttal testimony addressing US Airways’ economic-profit analysis and whether Sabre earned supracompetitive returns indicative of monopoly power.
After more than eleven years of litigation and a multi-week retrial, the jury returned a split verdict. It found that Sabre willfully maintained monopoly power through exclusionary conduct in the two-sided market—a finding for US Airways on the Section 2 claim—but rejected the Section 1 restraint-of-trade claim. The jury awarded only $1 in nominal damages, a result consistent with rejection of US Airways’ net-overcharge damages theory.