[oxymoron]

I am not convinced that AA is actively trying to block this app. I used to work for a major anti-bot vendor, so from that I know that all airlines suffer heavily from price scraping and try to protect their flight search endpoints. The impact to them is due to fees from the centralized data services that all airlines depend on.

[Syzygies]

"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence."

I fly American between JFK and SFO regularly, including today. They have the best prices these days for an "international" business class on this route. The food is good, the flight attendants are friendly and good at their jobs...

Automobile manufacturers offer pathetic "center console" software compared to Apple, Google. American's in-flight entertainment system makes auto makers look like geniuses. They just don't understand software.

[crznp]

Corollary: if you think that everyone is incompetent, perhaps you're missing something.

For instance, you fly with AAL because of price, food, service. What sort of entertainment system would change your mind? It is hard to create something that works for everyone, is integrated with a plane that doesn't have a lot of downtime, etc. I'd rather just use my own device, so the best entertainment system in the world is unlikely to change who I fly with. So why invest in that?

Or on the original topic: the problem is not that they can't develop a similar app -- if nothing else, they could license this one or just turn a blind eye. It seems like they don't want it to exist.

[Arainach]

It's really not. From what I've seen of crashes and boot up screens, most airlines seem to use some rebranded Android experience. I'm fairly confident that's what American used the most recent time I flew them based on some navigation buttons that appeared on the bottom at one point. There's a lot of Android devs out there in the world, but AA does seem to hire or subcontract to some particularly bad ones.

[waynecochran]

American Airlines has by far the worst web page for any airline. Frequent broken pages. Good luck if you have a question.

[Dracophoenix]

Then how do discount sites like Kayak, Expedia, or Matrix ITA/ Google Flights work without a hitch? The ticket prices are no lower than what SABRE will offer and it doesn't seem like AA is losing money in those cases.

[windowsworkstoo]

There are API’s, just not public ones - only available under commercial agreement

[cratermoon]

SABRE charges per call. That's probably why AA is trying to stamp out this app – it costs them money because it triggers calls through to SABRE.