For the past three weeks, BTE has carried articles about the plans by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to shorten the remittance time for BSP payments from one month to one week
We do so again this week to look more closely at how the Association, a cartel for airlines, is attempting to push this measure through.
IATA, whose members are the vast majority of major airlines around the world, is an immensely powerful organisation. It sets the rules by which agents and travel management companies operate in their dealing with carriers, including the accreditation of agents and the selling of and payment for airline tickets.
The bones of the remittance story is that some European airlines wish to cut from one month one week, the time agents have to make their payment for airline tickets under the Billing and Settlement Plan.
This has been an issue in Scandinavia for three years. A look at the minutes of IATA's Passenger Agency Conference, held on June 13-14 in Geneva this year, shows how the Association dealt with the problem.
According tose minutes, available on IATA's website, the national carrier for the region said it was taking the proposed change direct to Conference.
It was doing this because "repeated efforts since 2004 to try to get the agents on the APJC (Agency Programme Joint Council) to accept any change had failed and now the carriers saw no other option than to take this course of action."
In other words as they had failed to get the change approved through the normal channels, they were going to try another way.
Chris Gilbey, who chaired the Geneva meeting, pointed out that agents on the Passenger Agency Programme Global Joint council had "strongly opposed" the change and had asked for it to be withdrawn.
The reason, Mr Gilbey said was "they did not believe due process had been followed as the proposal had been submitted by the LCAG (Local Customer Advisory Group, made up of airline representatives) and not the APJC."
None of the other, far more pressing reasons, why agents oppose this measure was mentioned.
A member - IATA does not name who said what at its meetings - then said that the situation in Scandinavia "illustrated what could happen when agents on the Council were unwilling to compromise."
She is reported to have asked "whether there was any other way to implement the airlines' wish for more frequent reporting and remitting.
"If the airlines were unable to take these decisions, they would never be able to make any changes and it would also signal to other BSPs how Conference would act in the future."
In effect, airlines should be able to change the rules as they wished.
Fortunately, Mr Gilbey thought there was a process which would enable airlines to do exactly this even if agents "continued to block progress."
Before Mr Gilbey put forward his suggestion, another member raised a further aspect of the situation.
According to the minutes: “He (the member) felt that Europe was an exceptional situation in having once a month settlement and believed that the intention of the Conference to increase remittance frequency where possible should be made known to the agency community in this region.”
The implication of this is that IATA or the airlines have not actually "made known" why or even that they are trying change the frequency of payments. This beggars belief.
The national carrier then "expressed disappointment at their inability to move this issue forward at Conference, especially as they had been following advice from IATA on how to present the proposal."
But IATA told BTE two weeks ago it was "completely untrue" it was trying to move from monthly to weekly payments – a statement which has been followed by complete silence.
But back to Mr Gilbey and his cunning plan. Regrettably agents sometimes just will not do as they are told so "Conference had indicated in the past that provided it received a proper paper from its main body (in this instance, the APJC) indicating the reasons why the change was required, outlining the discussions that had taken place with the travel agents and why proposals had been rejected, then Conference would still entertain a proposal from the APJC."
Since then, the proposal has gone back to the APJC in Scandinavia where it was again rejected by the agents.
So, it will now go to Conference in December as Mr Gilbey said it could.
What this all seems to suggest is that IATA and its members are going to push through this change regardless.
There is strong opposition from agents not because IATA has not followed one of its arcane procedural rules but because such a change will cause their businesses serious problems.
That in itself is something that IATA should pause to think over, rather than dream up manoeuvres to by-pass the agents.
However in IATA-land, the old adage still seems to apply: If you can't beat them, move the goal posts.