Carlson Wagonlit Travel has told all airlines it deals with that it will charge an administration fee for every invalid Airline Debit Memo (ADM) it receives.
The moves comes after Steve Savage, CWT UK commercial director said that it was getting an
“increasing” number of invalid ADMS, some of which are eight, nine, ten or even 13 months old and are for sums of up to £3,000-4,000.
“The older the ADM is, the more likely the file is to have been archived and it can take quite a lot of man hours to find the original file. Then when you find it and the ADM is invalid, it has been a waste of time,” Mr Savage said.
He said the charge, possibly of around £50 an ADM, would only be levied on persistent offenders and after both parties had agreed that the ADM was invalid.
“We don't want the money other than to cover cost of the man hours. We want to get airlines to make sure that their ADMs are valid before they are sent to CWT,” he said.
Mr Savage said the response so far from the airlines to his letter which went out early in December had been “minimal.”
He said he had had eight replies. They have asked whether it is legal, whether it is allowed under IATA rules, whether it is acceptable. I have also had conversations with some airlines which say they will respond.
“But we are confident that this is the way forward. I don't think airlines will ever agree to a penalty fee but they can understand my point of view. We are trying to keep our costs down which otherwise would be passed onto our customers.
“If an airline is sending in one or two invalid ADMs once in a while, we would not charge them but there are persistent offender which send in five or six a month and these are the ones we will charge, “ he said.