After the unions, are travel agents British Airways’ next target?

Often during the seemingly never-endless strikes earlier this year, following the Icelandic volcano, most travel agents heard variations on the following — “How much is British Airways paying you for this? Or “How many free tickets are you getting out of this mess?”

Far from kudos or any kind of reward from BA, travel agents who worked overtime attempting to help BA passengers during their repeated, on-again, off-again strikes, have faced an even more draconian and unforgiving airline management system. It seems to be a strange way to treat the people responsible for half of the airline’s business.

When the chips were down, British Airways basically left passengers to fend for themselves when they canceled flights. Any passenger who booked online usually had to call for backup flights, which could mean hours on hold. Travel agency clients had to hope their agents were willing to spend hours on the computer and on hold, looking for alternatives.

Among the dozens of passengers I assisted, there wasn’t a single instance where British Airways automatically provided an alternate flight.

In some cases I was able to find another option within a few hours or the next days. In other cases, it took days to find a solution, often requiring being online late at night looking for cancellations. Other agents were in the same boat.

In addition, except for date changes, agents all had to reissue the original tickets, because British Airways stated this could not be done by their reservations office or at the airport. So more time, more paperwork, and no money, without even a token payment.

While travel agents told clients the truth — we were getting nothing — most agents hoped for some kind of a “thank-you” program.

What we have gotten instead — multiple kicks in the teeth.

We’re not the talking about average travel agents here. Everyone I have talked to for this post is part of an elite preferred group with British Airways, in short, a relatively small percentage of agents and consolidators with whom the carrier has a ongoing, measurable relationship.

Making matters worse, almost everyone I know in the industry, from agents to corporations to consolidators, has complained about new contracts with smaller discounts and compensation.

Along with the new contracts, British Airways has instituted new ticketing rules that can trip up even experienced agents. The rule, discount tickets must be issued within three days, seems reasonable enough. But, the three days starts as soon as the record is booked.

Which means, if say, a client calls to book some flights and hotels, then decides they want to keep the hotels but are not ready to ticket their flight, an agent can correctly cancel the booking and assume they are in compliance.

If the client calls back and rebooks the flights, even weeks or months later, the BA system reads the original booking date, and triggers an audit that will result in a debit for full fare. British Airways isn’t waiving the bills.

(Why would an agent book again in the same record? Many travelers will want to hold hotels, which usually do not have early cancellation penalties, pending a decision on flights; especially if they are traveling somewhere during a busy time.)

Now, the way to avoid this is to start a new booking. This is certainly doable, but it means in many cases, that hotels and flights end up on different agency records. It is simply inconvenient for passengers and agents alike.

Even though most experienced agents are aware of the issue, it’s an easy mistake to make and the penalties are severe.

Finally, BA is enforcing typos down to the letter. Here’s just one case. An agent booked three last minute ridiculously expensive one-way London to Paris business class tickets last December, during the Eurostar strike for more than $700 each. The agency had a deal for a small commission discount, requiring a series of codes to be added to the ticket. The agent added all the codes, but in one nine digit code, the last two digits were correct but transposed.

Months later, British Airways issued a bill for the mistake, not simply taking back the $60 commission paid per ticket, but charging a fine on top of that. The penalty was a flat $100 per name, so the net result was losing $120 on the transaction. Moreso, these penalties were assessed on tickets where the airline already made a significant profit. (Normally tickets on the London-Paris route are in the $100 one-way range.)

So the agency sent in paperwork explaining the error, apologized, but noted how small the mistake was, and expected to have the bill waived, or at least partially waived. No dice. British Airways treated it like a major error and demanded payment. Not even the district sales manager could help.

(For any reader not familiar with the system, refusing to pay is not an option for agents — the carrier can and will prohibit an agent from selling tickets in future.)

Now, clearly agents and airlines need to make a profit, so I suppose I understand British Airways’ desire to maximum their profit, but it’s particularly galling to face a zero tolerance policy from an airline whose actions have required rescuing their passengers for the better part of a year.

The latest dismal word from England is also that Unite union members, who had called a truce with BA, are considering a new strike ballot because they aren’t happy with how negotiations are going.

Knowing the potential “reward,” should the situation gets anywhere close to another strike, it will be interesting to see how many agents will take the chance of booking British Airways this time.