AMERICAN AIRLINES SELECTS ARC DIRECT CONNECTIONS FOR SETTLEMENT OF DIRECT SALES

Arlington, VA, May 28, 2003 - American Airlines has successfully shifted settlement of a significant volume of online traffic to the ARC Direct Connections product. A key benefit that ARC Direct Connections brings to the marketplace is an integrated business solution to meet the needs of carriers, travel distributors and their customers. Participating carriers have found proven ways to reduce their distribution costs and gain greater control over their distribution processes. Likewise distributors are now able to integrate their direct connections activity with their current retail work processes and reporting using both ARC Interactive Agent Reporting (IAR) system and ARC COMPASS^sm for their data storage, knowledge, and insight.

American Airlines is one of 6 major U.S. carriers that have selected ARC to provide financial settlement for an increasing portion of their direct sales.

ARC is widely recognized as the best settlement system processing over 157 million transactions annually. As the complexity and mix of distribution channels continues to evolve, ARC Direct Connections brings a highly integrated settlement and reporting option to the marketplace. ARC is actively involved in a number of direct connections projects with multiple carriers, distributors (both online and brick & mortar), and technology vendors.

"ARC looks forward to announcing several similar efforts throughout the year that allow other carrier-distributor-customer relationships to benefit from ARC Direct Connections solutions, "said Barry M. Lemley, CTC, ARC's Director - Emerging Markets.

ARC Direct Connections product provides a number of unique features to the travel settlement process for the industry that:

Supports a broad base of business models allowing suppliers and distributors to capture unique business processes, whether establishing a single supplier-distributor partnership or building a multiple direct access to a supplier host reservation system, often utilizing the supplier's web access functionality.

Provides a unique ability to consolidate sales across multiple distribution channels through the use of current ARC infrastructure for electronic settlement, credit card billing, electronic data storage, and customer reporting. The product supports a full range of ticketing transactions, various forms of payments, carrier and neutral ticket stock.

For further information about how carriers, technology oriented distributors and others may participate in this innovative solution, please contact: Bruce Berndt, ARC's Senior Manager - Emerging Markets at (703) 816-8505 or e-mail your request for information to: ARC.DirectConnect@arccorp.com