on most twa flights, karabu could buy at a heavy discount and then sell a certain portion of all twa's available seats. as a result, twa was hamstrung by the high proportion of heavily discounted seats that had been sold and was essentially left with no control over its own pricing. it could not afford to discount any of its own seats, and if twa wanted to increase revenue on busy routes by putting a larger plane into service, karabu would only claim more seats. twa was losing an estimated $150 million a year in revenue due to this deal.