SIR Richard Branson has warned agents to maintain
healthy sales of Virgin Atlantic tickets or risk losing their commission.
The Virgin chairman said he was prepared to follow
rival British Airways in scrapping commission if there were signs his airline
was losing out.
He said: “As long as agents work with us, we will work
with them. But we need to see agents are genuinely switch-selling to us and if
not we will go down the BA route.”
Virgin continues to offer 7% commission despite other
airlines paying lower rates or cutting them altogether.
Sir Richard said he hoped agents were switch-selling
away from BA to Virgin but needed strong evidence to safeguard the current
method of paying retailers.
He refused to say if Virgin will follow the BA
initiative of low-cost tickets for off-peak flights, but added the carrier had
plans for some deals.
“We have one or two things up our sleeve and we will
be competitive,” said Sir Richard.
Although BA does not offer the low-cost structure on
competing long-haul routes, it will be expanded to transatlantic and Far East
flights if it proves a success in Europe from this summer, putting more pressure
on Virgin.
Sir Richard, who has been invited to speak at this
year’s ABTA Convention, said his airline was close to resuming usual business
following September 11. He said: “The back end is already back to normal and
the front will depend on how the economy goes.”
Virgin has reinstated most of its services, apart from
Toronto and Chicago which should be back soon, said Sir Richard. He will be
holding talks with Indian officials this week to launch Mumbai services to
complement the Delhi operation.
Next month the carrier becomes the launch customer for
the Airbus A340-600. The 319-passenger jet will serve the Far East and South
Africa.
* Virgin plans to have
video-on-demand, e-mail and Internet by the end of the year following BA’s plan
to trial a similar system.