Singapore Airlines to resolve the problem of commissions

MUMBAI: The over three-month battle over commission between travel agents and foreign airlines may soon be resolved.
Faced with growing pressure from travel agents in India who have boycotted buisness with most foreign carriers, a senior executive of Singapore Airlines, the biggest foreign carrier in India, has agreed to meet travel agents later in the day to try and resolve the problem of commissions.

Singapore Airlines India general manager C W Foo is reliably learnt to have agreed to meet with members of six travel associations later in the evening.

The six associations includes the Travel Agents��� Association of India, Travel Agents Federation of India and the IATA Agents Association of India.

Travel Agents��� Association of India president Rajii Rai said: "I am going for the meeting with other associations chiefs in the evening. Mr C W Foo will be present in the meeting. The meeting is very important for travel agents and we expect to resolve the issue," Mr Rai added.

More than 2,500 travel agents across the country stopped selling air tickets for Singapore Airlines and Silk Air for the past two months to protest the airlines��� decision not to pay commission to agents.

Most airlines stopped paying the 5% commission from November last year, forcing agents to shift to a fixed-transaction fee on all tickets. From December, however, the fixed-transaction fee, which was in the range of Rs 350-2,500 a ticket, was also discontinued. Later, all domestic carriers agreed to pay only 3% as commission to travel agents.

But foreign airlines have not been paying anything to travel agents.

International carriers such as Lufthansa, Qatar Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Air France, United, Continental, KLM and Japan Airlines had stopped paying 5% commission to agents since November.

Typically, travel agents and online portals account for more than 85% of airlines' ticket sales, while the remaining 15% are sold directly by the carriers. There are about 50,000 travel agents in the country.