The Body Brokers

Even veteran Civil Aeronautics Board investigators were a bit bemused when, during a recent spot check of a group on a bargain-price charter flight from New York's J.F.K. Airport, they found an 81-year-old woman brandishing a youth-fare airline ticket. The incident reflects the widespread abuse of the regulations governing cut-rate charters, especially on the North Atlantic run, by so-called "charter consolidators," also known as "body brokers." Recently the CAB began a drive to clip their wings, and it has forced many out of business. In the process, it has stranded thousands of tourists who held return tickets that had become worthless.

Under the law, members of clubs, unions or comparable "affinity groups" are allowed to travel on charter flights, which cost half or less of the price of fares on scheduled airlines. Many consolidators form fraudulent clubs, advertise illegally for members, and enroll people who have nothing in common except a desire to save money (one CAB check established that twelve of the 15 members of one "affinity group " did not know what organization they were supposed to be members of). For a fee, the consolidators then quickly buy blocks of low-priced tickets from airlines.

The resulting journeys can be grim. TIME Correspondent Paul Ress recently took such a trip, organized by the London-based Park Lane Travel agency, from Paris to New York. His round-trip fare was $250 v. $504 for the lowest-priced comparable trip on a scheduled airline. He was issued a voucher that he was to present at the Park Lane offices in Manhattan when he wanted to return, a common practice among consolidators. The Paris-New York trip took a torturous 26 hours--partly because the flight left not from Paris but from Frankfurt, Germany, to which Ress was hauled by bus. A few days after he arrived in New York, he called at the travel agency's office and found that it was closed up, and that his voucher was worthless.

The CAB is striking at phony charters by requiring most charter passengers to produce round-trip tickets before they leave--a rule that prevents consolidators from selling vouchers that may or may not be honored. A crackdown by British authorities has sharply cut the number of flights by British supplemental lines, which had been active in booking questionable charters for U.S. consolidators. As a result, some of New York City's biggest consolidators have abruptly gone out of business, and many of their customers, caught in the U.S. or Europe with return-trip vouchers, have had to find other means of getting home.

Also, the CAB expects to issue soon a regulation permitting passengers without any affinity to organize and fly cut-rate anyway, if they book their flights six months in advance. This would greatly dim the appeal of the trips offered by fly-by-night body brokers.

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