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The viewpoint of dotmobi on aa.mobi
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American Airlines, the largest airline in the world has launched a version of its site for mobile devices. Through aa.com you can reserve, cancel or check the status of flights and see the offers or promotions available.
American Airlines has an excellent domain in the king extension of Internet, widely known (receives 1.6 million hits daily), easy to remember and easy to type on a mobile device. Aa.mobi it is not possible because the minimum number of characters 3.
However, American Airlines obtained the domain americanairlines.mobi on October 2 last year through a lawsuit filed with the National Arbitration Forum (American Airlines, Inc. v. Michael Nakhleh). That ruling was recovered with a defensive character and not to use it, as evidenced by the fact that not even have bothered to be redirected to aa.com.
Certainly, the marketing people of dotMobi have lost a great opportunity to publicize the extension and was being better known and used by the general public (outside the industry domaning).
So Domisfera asked Mr. Pinkard Alan Brand from dotmobi about this case. When he came back from Easter holidays, his response (also published by himself in DomainNameWire) was:
"Sorry for my delayed reply.
I think it would be great if American Airlines could acquire and utilize aa.mobi. However per our registry agreement with ICANN it is a dotMobi Reserved Name and thus is not currently available for general registration or acquisition by any organization, whether that be American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Alcoholics Anonymous, Airfare Assistant, etc.
There are a bunch of different mobile addressing nomenclatures out in the wild right now—and not one has emerged as a trusted standard (except .mobi) that anyone anywhere knows for certain will work on their mobile device on the network they are utilizing in their country. Dot com sites are simply not trustworthy to work on all devices, and then even if browser or device detection is used—not trustworthy to present information in a mobile context that invites repeat visits. If American Airlines chooses to market aa.com for their mobile audience that’s their decision. I think they would be wise to get all the traffic they can by utilizing their existing .mobi name assets and thinking of other ways to reach mobile consumers.
We have been and continue to work extensively with major brands. As you may know, competitors to American Airlines such as KLM (klm.mobi); Spanair (spanair.mobi); Virgin Atlantic (lovefromabove.mobi); Lufthansa (lufthansa.mobi) and Aer Lingus (aerlingus.mobi) have decided to utilize .mobi sites for specific passenger-friendly tasks and outright promotion."
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