BRITISH Airways has met consolidators to allay their fears that its new common fare structure may hit their sales.
The airline introduced the structure, called Everyday Fares, last month, which made similar-priced fares available to all agents.
It was introduced after the European Commission investigation into BA’s pay and commission structure, published in the autumn, declared its practice of offering net fares only to consolidators and charging a higher-priced published fare to others, was discriminatory.
BAhead of UK and Ireland leisure salesTricia Warwick met with the Association of Airline Consolidators last week to explain that the EC said it would be acceptable if BAnarrowed the price differential between fares made available to consolidators and those sold to other agents.
ABAspokeswoman said:”The gap has been narrowed so a lot of agents have access to fares that they didn’t have before.
“We introduced it in December but we were not legally allowed to talk about it in advance. Subsequently there has been a lot of speculation and we have been holding meetings with agents to put the record straight.”
AAC chairman David Mortimer said:”This is quite a radical rethink by BA. There has been speculation that published fares were going to be level with the net fare. Iam not saying that everyone is deliriously happy about it but a lot of our initial concerns have been addressed.”
In a separate move, BAand other suppliers are to scrap their minimum selling price rule on March 1.Under the rule, airlines and other suppliers can insist that agents do not sell fares below a certain price.
The practice was made illegal under the 1998 UK Competition Act.