<B>InsideTrack</B>
<B>American Modifies Hub Operations</B>
In an attempt to relieve its network of flight delays and cancellations, American Airlines is reorganizing operations at Dallas/Ft. Worth and Chicago O'Hare. "We're trying to build a firewall between our O'Hare operation and the rest of the network," said AA chief Don Carty during an analyst conference last week in New York. Aircraft will be allocated for exclusive operations in and out of Chicago to prevent weather and congestion problems from disrupting flights in other markets. At Dallas/Ft. Worth, early morning flights will be replaced with later ones and additional time will be built into connection schedules.
<B><A NAME="2">BA Delays End Of Commissions</B>
British Airways has delayed the abolition of travel agency commissions in the United Kingdom by three months, to April 1, 2001. The airline said agents and clients need more time to adjust to the new payment system of significantly smaller flat booking fees, which will necessitate the introduction of transaction fees by agents and the shifting of corporate travel departments from a profit center to a cost center. Furthermore, although the global distribution systems and Billing and Settlement Plan (the European equivalent of the Airlines Reporting Corp.) likely will be ready just in time for Jan. 1, there are several more technicalities to be ironed out. These include how the fee BA will pay agents for credit card payments will be settled. U.K. and Ireland Institute of Travel Management executive director Loraine Holdcroft said its members are broadly in favor of BA's changes but will welcome the postponement. A leading British travel agent said most clients now have revised their relationships with their agents in anticipation of the new system, but many still have not figured out how to deal internally with the shift from receiving a check to sending their agent one.
<B><A NAME="3">IBTA Schedules Feb. Event</B>
The International Business Travel Association will hold a two-day conference in Barcelona Feb. 15 and 16, which will feature a keynote speech by Frederick Sorensen, European Community director general of economic regulation and air transport, Europe. The conference, to be held at the Inter-Continental Princess Sophia Hotel, also will include a tabletop trade show and will be simultaneously translated into English, French, German and Spanish. IBTA also announced a pair of seminars concerning hotel RFPs: The first will be held Sept. 26 in Stockholm, followed by a Sept. 28 session in Paris. For more information, contact secretariat Carolyn Prescott at 44-0-192-3711-242 or
[email protected].
<B><A NAME="4">Perper Leaves Colgate For Invensys</B>
Cyndi Perper, president of the National Business Travel Association and former director of corporate travel services at Colgate-Palmolive, on Aug. 21 assumed a new position as the global commodity manager for travel at Invensys, a $16 billion global engineering, software and electronics company formed from the 1999 merger of U.K.-based companies BTR and Siebe. Perper in the short term will be covering the North American portion of the company's projected annual global T&E spend of $160 million. "It is an exciting new opportunity for me with a dynamic new work model," said Perper.
<B><A NAME="5">New International Flights</B>
The U.S. Department of Transportation earlier this month awarded seven weekly frequencies each to American and Delta for flights to Paris. Delta plans on using the flight authority for service from Atlanta and/or New York JFK. American will use its for Chicago O'Hare and/or San Jose. United, which also received rights to France through codeshare agreements, in March will cooperate with Lufthansa on the first daily nonstop service between Denver and Frankfurt. Lufthansa also will launch daily nonstops between Phoenix and Frankfurt. Delta, meanwhile, announced its first transatlantic service from Boston Logan. Pending approval, daily nonstop flights are set to begin June 1. The carrier also scrapped flights between Portland, Ore., and Tokyo, opting instead to introduce on April 1 its first nonstop flights between New York JFK and Tokyo. Delta that day also will begin the first daily nonstop service between Los Angeles and Nagoya, Japan. Pending government approval, US Airways on May 10 will begin daily nonstop service between its Philadelphia hub and Brussels. British Midland next spring will begin direct service between Manchester, U.K., and both Chicago and Washington.
<B><A NAME="6">Bass Acquisition Strategy Said To Be In Doubt</B>
Since Bass PLC's divestiture of its brewing business earlier this year, speculation has mounted that it would use the $3.4 billion in proceeds to acquire a hotel company to add to its Inter-Continental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn brands. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has been rumored most frequently to be the object of Bass' affections. That speculation went into turnaround last week with the announced departures of CEO Ian Prosser and head of the hotels' Americas division Tom Arasi. Now observers are wondering whether Bass Hotels itself might become the object of an unexpected takeover.