The operator of the Russian air transport Settlement System (SVVT), JSC “TKP”, has proposed to partners from November 1 to change the payment scheme for air tickets issued through SVVT. Now the passenger pays for the TCH services through the ZZ fee (for the last few years its size has been 185 rubles per segment. – Ed.), it is added to the ticket price by default. Instead of a fee, ticket agencies are offered to pay a fee for the information technology support service (ITO). According to RBC, the fee is subject to VAT. Thus, the cost of each flight segment sold through the TAP will increase from 185 to 222 rubles.
According to Sergey Demidenko, President of the Association of Air Transport Agencies (AAOT), this castling will lead to a significant increase in the costs of the TCH partners, since now they pay a fixed amount for ITO – only 1800 rubles per month. He predicts that ticket companies will become less competitive, as it will become more profitable for their customers, especially corporate ones, to buy tickets not from ticket agencies, but directly from airlines.
The experts interviewed by TURDOM partially agree with this point of view. Firstly, the proposed payment scheme will affect only tickets of domestic airlines that use the TCP, since payments with foreign ones are made through a foreign BSP system. Therefore, the share of TAP in the total volume of some large companies is minimal. Secondly, the average consumer is unlikely to notice the difference between 185 and 222 rubles. – This amount will simply disappear into the total price of the ticket.
This delta is really critical only for corporate clients – enterprises and companies that use the services of agencies to send employees on business trips. “Contracts with them are concluded in advance and for a long time. Ticket agencies will have to renegotiate them and explain why a new fee will be added to the ticket price from November 1, which takes place under another expense item,” a representative of one of the companies told Turdom.
Ticket market participants with large volumes in the business travel segment see this as a serious problem. According to our information, they do not lose hope of reaching an agreement with the TAP and have scheduled a meeting with the company’s management, and if it does not help, they are ready to contact the FAS.
The ZZ tax has been used for more than 20 years, but all this time there have been disputes about its legality. In 2019, the TAP tried to lobby for changes to the Federal Aviation Regulations, but the attempt failed. In the summer of this year, the Railway Court in Novosibirsk, at the request of the Novosibirsk transport prosecutor, ordered Pobeda Airlines to return these 185 rubles to the passenger and compensate for moral damage, since the carrier could not justify the legality of including the fee in the ticket price, referring only to the conditions of the TCP. As observers suggest, this is precisely why there is a desire to replace the fee with a fee and thereby remove all negative aspects, more precisely, by shifting them to partners.
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