JetBlue is in the "final stages of negotiations" with several GDSs that will put the airline back in at least some of those systems, airline chairman and CEO David Neeleman revealed July 25.

"We're in the final stages of negotiations with several of the GDSs," Neeleman said in a conference call to discuss the airline's second-quarter financial results, a $14 million profit. "Their economics work for us now. They fit in our cost model."

Neeleman said GDS participation will give JetBlue access to markets it has been missing, namely some corporate bookers and people who use travel agents. He also noted other low-cost carriers, such as Southwest and AirTran, are in at least some GDSs.

JetBlue used to be in several GDSs, but it pulled out of Worldspan in 2001 and Galileo in 2002. That left it only in Sabre, but JetBlue withdrew from that GDS as well at the end of 2004, citing the cost of the GDS, the early success of the airline's new corporate booking tool and the growing number of distribution alternatives.

At the time, Sabre accounted for just 2% of JetBlue's bookings, and JetBlue participated in Sabre at a low level that limited it to filing six fares, without live availability or seat maps.

When JetBlue announced in December 2004 that it would be leaving Sabre, the airline's director of sales, Noreen Courtney-Wilds, said, "It's just not the same as it was a few years ago, when you needed to be in the GDS channel." But Courtney-Wilds also did not rule out the possibility that JetBlue would someday return to a GDS in some way.