City-based travel agents once again resorted to ‘Gandhigiri’ and presented a bouquet to Kingfisher Airways Manager (Eastern India) Kiran Naidu on Tuesday, to protest against the airlines decision on ‘zero commission’ regime.

As many as 35 representatives from various travel agencies had gathered at the Kingfisher office on Bankshal Street to meet Naidu, but were peeved when she did not agree to come out and instead asked them to come to her cabin.

“At the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) convention held earlier this year, Vijay Mallya had said that Kingfisher Airlines would never target travel agents for cost-cutting. But he seems to have forgotten his promise,” said Anil Punjabi, TAFI chairman, Eastern Chapter.

After deciding to implement ‘zero commission’ from November 1, travel agents and airlines had discussed the possibility of introducing a transaction fee on the ticket price.

“Four airlines — Jet Airways, Air India, Kingfisher and Singapore Airlines — have added transaction fee as a ticket component which will be given to us,” said Anil Punjabi.

While Air India has already started charging the fee at its counters and website, Kingfisher, Singapore Airlines and Jet Airways have not introduced the new system on their websites yet, Punjabi added.

The TAFI has already boycotted three airlines — Air France, Northwest Airlines and KLM.

According to the treasurer of TAFI (Eastern Chapter), Sheik Afnan, who also owns a travel agency, 95 per cent of their income comes from selling airline tickets.

“When the business is good, we sell about 80 to 100 tickets per day. At least 200 agents and 53,000 sub-agents will be affected by this decision of the airlines,” said Afnan.

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