News

BRITISH Airways has scrapped charging ticket fulfilment fees to agents using its new trade on-line booking system in a bid to regain industry support.

Under BA’s current on-line system, BA Reservations On-Line, agents are charged £3 for a paper ticket and £1 for an e-ticket. 

The airline is ditching BAROL - less than a year after it was launched - in favour of its new Trade Fare Explorer extranet system, a web-based booking tool modelled on the search engine used on ba.com.

But one agent branded the move as “too little, too late”.

Senga Shearer, senior business house consultant at Middlesex-based Champion Travel, said: “BA should never have introduced the charges in the first place, they complicated things.” 

BA general manager leisure sales Andrew Swaffield said: “Scrapping ticketing fees is a positive move for the trade. It will also enhance the popularity of the new system, which will hopefully lead to the sale of more BA fares.”

BAROL, which was only launched last October and reportedly cost £3 million to develop, has been dogged by technical problems and was criticised by agents for being slow and cumbersome.

BA said it hopes to have the system in place by the end of the month.