AF/KL Charges To Be Eaten By Travelport

Travelport has elected to eat the surcharges that will be imposed by AF/KL in France and NL starting this summer.

While both parties admit they are far apart - Travelport is trying to take the pressure out of the system by covering the overage at least for the short term. Just like Amadeus initially did for LH bookings in Germany.

The full impact has not yet hit Germany yet. LH is collecting its fee (4.90 Euros) for LX and LH via an ADM process. Those ADMs should be hitting people's desks in a few days. Then you will see some shift in the market.

We can be pretty sure that there are other carriers considering doing exactly the same thing. So in essence there are at least 4 airlines in Europe charging some form of GDS surcharge fee for content sold via the GDS. (The other 2 players currently doing this are Norwegian Air Shuttle and EasyJet).

Having spent the last week in Berlin at ITB, this is a hot topic for all kinds of Intermediaries, GDSs and Airlines.

With Travelport showing canned demos of its G2 developed product for Multi-Access GDS and LUTE Technologies CommandPRO already in production with several hundred agencies, there are going to be some interesting times ahead.

Cheers