At the recently concluded ICON 2013, the fifth biennial Convention of IATA Agents Association of India (IAAI), the association concurrently organised their Annual General Meeting (AGM), wherein they announced the new IAAI committee. Biji Eapen, Chairman & CEO, SpeedWings Aviation Academy was re-elected for the fifth consecutive term as the National President. V L Jaghannathan has been re-elected as General Secretary, while S Saldanha as National Treasurer and Surinder Kumar (Delhi) as National Managing Committee Member. R Churiwala (Kolkata), Naresh Rajkotia (Maharashtra) and T K Gopakumar (Tamil Nadu) have been elected as National Managing Committee Members. H S Chawla (Delhi) and M P Johnson (Kerala) are the outgoing National Committee Members. The new office-bearers will serve their positions for two years (2013 to 2015).
On the sidelines of the AGM, Eapen revealed that the association has recently formed the IAAI legal forum. He further informed that the main intention behind forming this forum is to accumulate adequate fund for legal proceedings with zero commission airlines as the cost of legal procedure is extremely high.
Saldanha further added that this forum will prove to be very important for the entire industry in the long run and he hopes that their fellow colleagues and brothers from the fraternity will support this cause. “We have already managed to collect Rs 1.85 lakh, which I believe is a very good start and I want to urge everybody to continue to extend their support for the betterment of the entire travel fraternity.”
IAAI is the foremost force responsible of the recent Supreme Court order, which had proclaimed that commission has to be the part of airline tariff. “Our main focus of IAAI will be to re-establish commission from airlines. If we get support from the industry, we will transform the face of this industry. We are now almost in the last stages of the legal batles with airlines to restore commission for agents.”
