Agents reacted with anger and disbelief to a statement by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) that it was not pushing to shorten BSP payment times
They described the claim by the airlines' association as "ridiculous" and "absurd."
One said that member airlines were so determined to change the payments from monthly to weekly that IATA had changed its rules to allow it through.
When BTE asked IATA last week what was happening regarding plans to shorten the payment time, the Association said it was "completely untrue" that it was doing this.
Its spokesperson added that that no such change was planned "in the near future or in any future."
Lars Thykler, managing director of the Danmark Rejse Forening (DRF), the Danish agents' association, said he had attended a meeting of the Agency Programme Joint Committee (APJC) earlier this year when airlines proposed such changes.
He said they had first come up with this "fantastic proposal" in 2004.
The Scandinavian agents were against it because they received interest while holding the money. "It would be too expensive for us to change," he sad.
The issue came up again at IATA's Passenger Conference in Geneva in June. The discussion of the proposed change is noted in the minutes of the meeting available on IATA's website.
The minutes record that the agents were "strongly opposed" to such a change.
Mr Thykler said that despite this opposition, the airlines - understood to be Air France/KLM and SAS - brought the issue up again with the Scandinavian agents at a meeting on October 10.
"We thought we had won but the airlines came back with the same proposal – weekly remittance," he said.
Mr Thykler said the airlines' reason for wanting to change was because of alleged bankruptcies among agents.
But Mr Thykler said these just a tiny proportion of the total number of agencies in Scandinavia.
"The bottom line is that there is another Passenger Conference in December and we expect they will put the proposal forward again," he said.
Mike Platt, HRG's director industry affairs, who made a presentation on the issue at the recent ACTE conference in Munich, said: "This has reached a point where it has got to stop."
He said if the proposal went through, agents would be presented with a "large cash flow problem."
He added that customers paid their bills to their agents on a monthly basis.
"If IATA asks us to pay at the end of the week, we will have to change our terms with our customers," he said.
He said IATA was pushing the issue in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
"When the airlines were defeated in Scandinavia, we thought 'That's it.' But what they did was to go further up the IATA hierarchy and get the rules changed.
"They are now saying that you don't have to go the APJC. You can change without agreement."
Mr Platt also said that the issue was back on the agenda for the December meeting of the Passenger Conference.
BTE approached IATA asking for clarification of its views on this issue. The Association did not respond.