Sabre Allows Travel Agents to Sell United's Economy Plus

(MoneyWatch)  There's some good news out there for United and its Economy Plus product this week. It looks like Sabre has finally enabled travel agents to sell Economy Plus upgrades directly through its MySabre and Turbo Sabre tools. This will without question improve United's ancillary revenue position. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but I just can't believe it took them this long.

United may have launched Economy Plus long ago, but it took them a few years before they realized they could start charging much for it. Over the last couple years, we've seen it grow to the point where you can now upgrade to Economy Plus at any time before booking by logging on to their website.

But what about corporate travelers? They might be able to swing for an Economy Plus upgrade under their travel policy, but they couldn't easily do it through their corporate travel department. Now, Sabre has enabled its travel agents to do just that, and that means no annoying expense reports for Economy Plus purchases and much better tracking for companies. It should improve revenue for United and convenience for the companies that use it. Excellent.

It's not clear why it took so long to do this. In the release, Sabre says "United is the most recent airline to take advantage of Sabre's pay-for-seats capability. . . ." That tells me that Sabre has had the capability and United is just now deciding to use it. I sent an email request to United asking for clarification, but I have yet to hear back. Either way, it's done now and that's what really matters.