Rubbish! ITA's matrix site is probably the best air search site there is and is just a demo of their api. Yes ITA is expensive but you are paying for search, they don't do booking. But the search is awesome because unlike the collective GDS, they are purely a search company. Whereas GDS are reservation systems and they make their money via fees paid to the GDS by the airlines. Search as an api business is a secondary concern/revenue stream to them.
And why are they inherently unprofitable?Sites like Kayak, Skyscanner, Adioso are meta search sites only that make money by sending the user to another site to make a booking. They then make a small affiliate commission if the user then books their flight. Airlines actually really like good meta search sites because they acquire customers cheaply and avoid GDS fees altogether so are more likely to pay commission including your example of Qatar Airlines who pay 2% per booked flight to affiliates see http://www.qatarairways.com/ae/en/affiliates.page and not ZERO as you say. So they have zero need for the GDS unless an airline has no direct connect api in which case the GDS is that api source usually for availability (if you have implemented the schedules and fares locally) if not then a dumb search to the GDS is possible but a crap, slow, expensive way to include an airline in your site and no use to Adioso who need fast local graphed, cached data for expansive NLP searches.
An affiliate is an incentivised partner but I guess you are talking about how airlines pay travel agents online or offline. However, Adioso are not an online travel agent.
And why are they inherently unprofitable?Sites like Kayak, Skyscanner, Adioso are meta search sites only that make money by sending the user to another site to make a booking. They then make a small affiliate commission if the user then books their flight. Airlines actually really like good meta search sites because they acquire customers cheaply and avoid GDS fees altogether so are more likely to pay commission including your example of Qatar Airlines who pay 2% per booked flight to affiliates see http://www.qatarairways.com/ae/en/affiliates.page and not ZERO as you say. So they have zero need for the GDS unless an airline has no direct connect api in which case the GDS is that api source usually for availability (if you have implemented the schedules and fares locally) if not then a dumb search to the GDS is possible but a crap, slow, expensive way to include an airline in your site and no use to Adioso who need fast local graphed, cached data for expansive NLP searches.