American Airlines has reached a tentative settlement with flight booking company Sabre in the airline’s fight to recover more than $139m in legal fees after winning just $1 in damages at a 2022 trial. In a filing on Saturday, American and Sabre told U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan that the companies agreed in principle to resolve their fight over fees in the 13-year-old case. The proposed terms were not disclosed in the court filing. Sabre declined to comment on Monday, and American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sabre was sued in 2011 by US Airways, which later merged with Fort Worth, Texas-based American. The lawsuit accused Sabre of harming competition in the flight-booking market and charging excessive fees. A jury in 2022 found Sabre had acted unlawfully to stifle competition, but also that US Airways’ contract with Sabre did not constrain trade as the airline alleged. The jury awarded American $1 in damages, and Sabre, which denied wrongdoing, did not appeal. American then asked the court to order Sabre to cover its legal fees totaling $139m. Schofield ruled last year that American was entitled to seek reasonable legal fees after its nominal win of $1. The judge said the federal antitrust law at issue allows a prevailing plaintiff to recover fees. Sabre was due to respond this week to American’s legal fee bid. Sabre and American asked the judge to push the deadline to December to allow the companies to finalize their deal.<br/>
oneworld
British Airways’ passengers were hit by widespread disruption on Monday after the airline suffered a fresh IT failure. The carrier suffered around four hours of disruption on Monday evening, as the airline said it was “working to resolve a technical issue with some of our systems”. Passengers around the world reported major hold-ups as the problems swept through BA’s operations, including leaving some planes unable to take off because of issues communicating with the carrier’s base at London Heathrow. Other customers complained of problems accessing the BA app, while the company’s website was also down. The problems with BA’s website began at about 5pm London time, and were easing by 7.30pm, according to DownDetector.com, which collects third-party reports of online service disruptions. By 9.30pm BA said its systems were working again. The incident is the latest high-profile IT failure for the airline, which also suffered from major computer problems in 2017, 2019 and 2022. The most significant of these came in 2017 over a holiday weekend, when tens of thousands of passengers were left stranded in an incident that inflicted lasting damage on the airline’s brand. Alex Cruz, the former boss of BA, told the Financial Times in 2021 that big airlines were still using outdated technology and needed to invest to improve their operations. “If you look at the underlying systems that all big airlines . . . rely on, it is 20, 30, 40, 50-year-old technology. It is truly amazing to see,” he said. BA’s management has since made it a priority to modernise its technical systems as part of a £7bn investment from its owner International Airlines Group. But it has suffered other operational problems, including air traffic control disruptions, and cancellations and delays have risen sharply since the pandemic. BA late on Monday said: “Our teams worked hard to resolve an issue we experienced for a short time earlier this evening. We’ve apologised to customers for delays to their flights and ensured they were able to reach their destinations as planned.”<br/>