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Travel Industry Calls on Air Canada to Roll Back Fare Action

The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA), [the American Society of Travel Agents], the [the Association of Corporate Travel Executives] and [the Business Travel Coalition] today jointly called on Air Canada to immediately roll back actions it took -- without any advance notice – on Tuesday to pull out of the travel agency channel its lowest and most popular fares for Canadian travelers.

Before the start of the business day Tuesday, Air Canada completely stopped selling its Tango fares via Canadian travel agencies and the GDSs that travel agencies use as convenient tools for finding flights and fares.  These fares represent roughly 20% of all tickets used by Canadians and are often the lowest fares available for a consumer’s trip. 

Christiane Théberge, Vice President Public Affairs of ACTA, said that, “Travel agencies, which sell roughly 75% of Air Canada’s tickets, received no warning whatsoever of this drastic action.  Instead, thousands of travel agents arrived at work on Tuesday morning to learn that overnight Air Canada had blocked them from helping a large sector of the traveling public. This unfortunate and radical move by Air Canada, in a market where it is the dominant carrier, demonstrates a stunning disregard for the interests of travel agencies and the consumers they serve,” she said.

Kathy Sudeikis, President of ASTA, said, “We are surprised and disappointed that Air Canada has chosen to create chaos and inefficiency for both travel agencies and consumers by making it difficult to find the airline’s lowest fare options.  We are especially troubled by the callous manner in which Air Canada handled such an important customer service issue.”

Kevin Mitchell, Chairman of the Business Travel Coalition added, “Air Canada’s public rationale for taking this action –that ‘GDS limitations’ forced it to stop selling on Tuesday fares the GDSs had sold for years -- is a smokescreen.  These fares were fully available in the GDSs on May 1, and they could have remained in the GDSs had Air Canada not taken this unilateral step on May 2.  Air Canada’s obvious desire is to turn their backs on the very travel agencies who sell so large a share of their seats and on corporations who depend every day on these agencies’ services.” 

ACTA, ASTA, ACTE and BTC called on Air Canada to immediately reverse this misguided, anti-consumer move and to once again put these important fares back into the systems that travel agencies use to serve their customers in an efficient and cost-effective way.