BRITISH Airways
has scrapped charging ticket fulfilment fees to agents using its new trade
on-line booking system in a bid to regain industry support.
Under BA’s current
on-line system, BA Reservations On-Line, agents are charged £3 for a paper
ticket and £1 for an e-ticket.
The airline is
ditching BAROL – less than a year after it was launched – in favour of its new
Trade Fare Explorer extranet system, a web-based booking tool modelled on the
search engine used on ba.com.
But one agent
branded the move as “too little, too late”.
Senga Shearer,
senior business house consultant at Middlesex-based Champion Travel, said: “BA
should never have introduced the charges in the first place, they complicated
things.”
BA general manager
leisure sales Andrew Swaffield said: “Scrapping ticketing fees is a positive
move for the trade. It will also enhance the popularity of the new system,
which will hopefully lead to the sale of more BA fares.”
BAROL, which was
only launched last October and reportedly cost £3 million to develop, has been
dogged by technical problems and was criticised by agents for being slow and
cumbersome.
BA said it hopes to have the system in place by the end of the month.