BRITISH AIRWAYS has agreed to pay a fine of 4.5 million Canadian dollars (€2.8 million) after pleading guilty to taking part in a cartel that fixed prices on air cargo in Canada.
The fine by Canada’s competition bureau is the latest in a series of penalties imposed by authorities on airlines globally in what has become one of the biggest international cartel investigations.
News of the fine comes as BA prepares to announce record losses later this week when it presents its second-quarter results. The airline, which made a record £401 million (€448 million) pre-tax loss last year, has been warning for some time that it could suffer an even bigger full-year loss this year.
The airline is also dealing with the threat of industrial action from its cabin crew, who will meet at Sandown Park racecourse today to discuss the airline’s plans to change their working conditions.
Canada’s competition bureau announced that BA had “admitted to fixing surcharges on the sale and supply of international air cargo exported on certain routes from Canada between April 2002 and February 2006”.
BA said in a statement that it had co-operated fully with the Canadian investigation. It said the indictment was based on facts similar to those in the cargo surcharge investigations in the US and European Union in 2006.
BA was fined £121.5 million in July 2007 by the UK Office of Fair Trading for its role in a separate conspiracy with Virgin Atlantic to fix surcharges on passenger fares.
Virgin Atlantic and its executives avoided prosecution by being the first to volunteer information on surcharge-fixing.
Today’s cabin crew meeting follows the Unite union’s decision on Friday to launch a legal challenge against BA’s plan to change working patterns for its 14,000 cabin crew. The union said it had started proceedings at the High Court in London for an injunction against BA imposing new pay and conditions on workers from November 16th.
“BA is changing people’s contracts and they are doing it in a unilateral way,” Unite said.
BA said the changes did not alter contractual terms and conditions for individual crew members. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)
