Iata places OTA in €14m default over unpaid bills 23 June 2014 | By Sophie Griffiths
Online travel agency AirFastTickets.co.uk is understood to be in discussions with Iata after a letter was issued last week suspending the company from trading.
The letter, which was sent to airlines, has been seen by TTG, and reveals that the company owes a total of €45 million. In it Iata states: “Regrettably, we have to inform you that earlier this morning we were forced to place the UK office in default, due to their inability to meet the deadline of their remittance obligations (sales of the month of May). “Further to the default declaration for BSP UK, we have also proceeded to suspend the agent in Greece and Germany, due to the common ownership structure of these agencies”. The airline association added that it had been monitoring daily the sales per market for the last plus 50 days, “with several weekly calls with AirFastTicket group’s management, to discuss and agree on risk mitigation actions”. It said that “ticketing authority for all BSP airlines in these markets has been removed by IATA and communicated to the GDSs”.
The OTA’s May and June sales for the UK totalled €23.5 million. The amount at risk for the UK is €13.9 million. The CAA has confirmed to TTG that the company has a standard Atol, which is still in place. In addition to its UK site, AirFastTickets has websites for the US, Russian, German and Greek markets. The company has so far failed to respond to TTG’s attempts to contact it.
|