[LuganoPirate]

Those were the good old days of IATA when you could pay 20% extra and fly 50% more miles I think. I remember working with the ABC travel guides and one of my routes would be: AMS ZRH DXB COLOMBO SIN HONG KONG SIN MALE BAHREIN ZRH AMS using 5 different airlines and all for the regular AMS SIN AMS fare plus 20%.

Ahhh, Nostalgia 😉

[Swissdiver]

That said, and in an effort to send back this thread to its original question :-), the nostalgia doesn’t help us to better understand the present…

The TA’s make money through:
– the fee they charge us
– higher fares that probably provide them a form of kickback (could anyone confirm?)
– occasional incentives such as the ones mentioned by LondonCity
– …

Anything else?

[NTarrant]

Yes indeed LP, because you had not exceeded the maximum premitted mileage for the furthest point, although I would have suspected the SIN-HKG-SIN would have been a side trip, but possibly a “one way back haul” but I am exceedingly rusty on IATA fares and ticketing.

Nostalgia does actually help Swissdiver, in those days you would not have paid a fee. The travel management copmanies of today are only formed through what was then known as the “business house” sections of the then main stream travel agencies, seperate sections dealing with businesses rather than public.

Other than trying to sell further travel related items there is little else that TA’s would earn money through.

Just as a question Swissdiver, if you feel that TA’s don’t give you a good deal why don’t you book directly with an airline or try another agent.

[Swissdiver]

@NTarrant: because it is not my call. It is a client’s TA and although I demonstrated a number of times the TA’s inefficiency, they seems to stick to it (well have to say the client is a listed company…).

[AMcWhirter]

Swissdiver: as noted by NTarrant nostalgia does count in this case.

That is because Swiss holds a huge share of its local market (in the same way that KLM controls the Dutch market).

Therefore certain other carriers can only attract passengers by offering incentives.

It means commission or extra commission to TAs is bound to be payable in the Swiss market by those airlines who may not have the same reputation or identity as that of the national airline.

Or perhaps there may be savings offered to Swiss passengers by an airline based in a nearby country. (Assuming that carrier does not operate flights from a Swiss airport). For example, a long-haul carrier flying out of MXP might offer attractive prices in order for woo Swiss passengers across the border.

[LuganoPirate]

My use of the word “Nostalgia” was to hark back to distant days when booking multi destination trip seemed much easier than today where each airline has its own website and differing fare structures.

In order to understand the present, we need to to look at the past, and the only difference between then and now is in the way TA’s earn their money, which they need to do in order to survive and provide the service they do.

From the public’s perspective, they can do one of two things:
Book everything themselves
or
Have a professional do it for them and expect to pay for this service directly or indirectly

I don’t know your profession Swissdiver, but I’m sure whatever it is if you do not mark up your sales in some way, you would not survive. Profit is needed to survive and if a client is unhappy with the pricing of their TA they are free to book direct if they think it will be cheaper or better in some way.

Finally, if the client is happy with his TA, then let it be. Come the day he is unhappy, he’ll soon move elsewhere. Sometimes I know I’m paying a bit more, but I’m just happy to have all the work and effort done for me, be able to call my agent at 9 at night and have them re-route me or whatever. That is worth paying some extra and I’m happy. The day I’m not I’ll move.

[LuganoPirate]

PS. Nigel, you’re right. The fare was not based on SIN but HKG being the furthest point. It was many flights ago and some of the old brain cells carrying the memories must have faded in the meantime!!!

[Swissdiver]

@LP: I am a strong believer of services at a cost. BUT I want to know the cost. In the case I mentioned, I actually don’t carry it. The client does. So yes, I could just let it go. Well at the end of the day, this is what I do as long I can drive the airline selection to what I like.

@LC: Fully agree. Even in the old times I could fly BA from GVA to the Middle East and they were not charging the extra mileage because they wanted the business. Actually they wanted it so much we could fly one leg in F for the BC fare…

The aim of this topic is to try to put the light on some shaded areas since at the end of the day, we (a very general “we”) pay for this.

[AMcWhirter]

LuganoPirate

Mentioning HKG reminded me of a clever TA ticketing wheeze decades ago when BA held a monopoly on the London-Hong Kong route. (CX did not appear on the scene until 1979).

Clever TAs ticketed their passengers to Taipei, rather than HKG in order to get a cheaper price for their customers.

There was a time during the mid-1970s when BA raised its London-HKG fares so much that London-Taipei (via HKG) cost less than London-HKG.

Today, such “beyond destination” ticketing would be picked up by the airline. But in those days it was all paper tickets and the then airline computer systems weren’t sophisticated enough to detect such activity.

[LuganoPirate]

LondonCity, I remember that now you mention it, but did not the old BCAL also fly the route? I do remember flying a few times with them and once free with vouchers from Austin Reed as I had bought a suit from them?

I just found some old coupons, Lagos – Cotonou, from the days when you could buy a ticket in Lagos for a tenth of what it would cost normally.

Someone would get across the border for you, pay cash Naira’s and take out the first coupon, having made a few marks on it and writing “1pc, 20kgs” in the weight box to make the ticket look like it had been used for the first leg.

My best one was Lagos-Cotonou-Paris, AMS-ZRH-DXB- COLOMBO -SIN -HKG- SIN -MALE BAHREIN-Abu Dhabi- ZRH AMS-Paris-NY (concorde) Par-AMS-ZRH-Douala-Lagos.

All in first class for 10,000 Naira which was then £1,000 + £100 for the runner (who no doubt also got a kickback from the airline Swissdiver ;-))

Memories, memories!!!

[AMcWhirter]

Lugano Pirate, not sure when BCal entered the London-HKG route. CX entered the route, flying out of Gatwick via BAH, in early summer 1980 (not 1979 as I mentioned above). I feel that BCal followed shortly after in which case it was CX who broke BA’s monopoly.

As for the Nigerian tickets. Yes it all comes back to me know. For a while they were the cheapest fares on the market. Some airlines must have lost a small fortune in revenue.

[NTarrant]

Ahh, now one gets deeper into old methods! LHR-HKG was what was regarded as “cabotage” and only BA were allowed to fly on the route. The UK governement gave authorisation between LHR-HKG and it was not until a conservative government relaxed the regulations that first allowed CX and then BR not long after.

I think LC’s dates seem close to what I recall, certainly not 1979 as a Labour governement would not have given competition to BA in those days

[LuganoPirate]

Yes, cabotage. But as an internal route, would that not have allowed BACL to fly it?

I flew them around 1985 and have just found this site on the web?
http://www.british-caledonian.com/

[AMcWhirter]

The aviation term cabotage is a strange one. It refers to a “domestic international route.”

London-HKG was an odd one in colonial days. For traffic rights, an airline needed approval from both the UK and HKG authorities.

In was in the 1970s when BA’s performance on the HKG route was especially below par (poor punctuality and B747s which needed a spring clean) that the HKG authorities wanted competition to improve standards.

At that time, CX flew no father west than the Gulf. So the London route was quite a step up. Flights had to touch down in Bahrain because the B747s at the time did not have the range to reach London or Hong Kong non-stop.

Competition had the desired result. It forced BA to pull up its socks.

[Author]

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