On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 13:31:15 -0800, you wrote: > Across the board and unilaterally, all travel >agents in the US and Canada should completely shut down for a single week.= The >majors would be swamped and beleaguered in such a way that their >passenger/customer satisfactory levels would would sink to abysmal and >vitually irreversible depths! There's no way in a weeks time they would be >able to handle such devastation. I say Canada and the US because the majo= rs >dare not apply this practice in lesser regulated countries around the >globe...visit an airline counter in one of these countries and you'll >understand why. The main reason for airline commission capping and cutting in certain markets is tied in with where the airlines are strong. So, the US carriers have axed base commissions in the US where they have their bases but dare not do so abroad for fear of their limited business there virtually disappearing. And just look at the UK: the dominant carrier is BA, which has recently cut its payments to agents by over 58 percent for UK and domestic bookings. So, the agent now gets GBP2.50/USD3.56 for a one-way sector, double for a return. As it costs about GBP20/USD28.50 to ticket a booking, the only way for an agent to make money is to either switch-sell to another airline which pays more or to charge a service fee for a BA booking. A lot of agents are now switch-selling away from BA, but I would think that success is patchy because alternatives are not always available. Now, quite apart from major carriers effectively imposing a price rise in their dominant markets, there is the issue that independent travel advice is going to get tougher to obtain. In the days when airlines paid agents the IATA-recommended rate of nine percent commission, there was a chance of the public getting unbiased advice from agents. The future is that agents will recommend airlines with whom they have deals, or not recommend airlines who fail to pay them enough for doing work on their behalf. This may not be a concern to the learned members of this list, but the fact is that the vast majority of people know very little of the airline business, but will find themselves steered even morer in a direction which suits the airlines and agents. -- Visit Caribbean Aviation: http://www.caribbeanaviation.com/ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? US W++ N++ o+++ w=20 b+ y+=20 ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------