As we had written in our previous issue, the board defending economic competition in the Republic of Armenia encountered an anti-competitive agreement in the flight exchange market. The Armenian side, “Armavia”, arranges flights from Yerevan-Istanbul-Yerevan and the “Fly-Air” Turkish airways provide the same flights. “Bagrat Tours” takes care of all the expenses of the tickets for the “Armavia” flight. On July 1st of 2004, the Turkish “Kule” company signed a contract with “Bagrat Tours” and the latter must not allow “Fly-Air” to provide flights for the months of January-March. In exchange, “Bagrat Tours” INC plans on transferring the $50 dollars received from each flight made by “Armavia” to “Kule”. This means that only one of the airways provides the flights from Yerevan-Istanbul and back-“Armavia”. After signing the contract, the Armenian side has sold a $170 dollar ticket for $290 dollars, while “Kule” has received profit without working. As a result, the passenger is the one that loses.
The board considered this as an “open anti-competitive agreement and the contract is proof of that.” “Bagrat Tour” and “Kule” both got fined 1% of the flight ticket from Yerevan-Istanbul and back. The owner of “Bagrat Tours” Bagrat Navoyan announced that the fine was approximately 1.1 million drams.
“Our lawyer is currently investigating this case,” said B. Navoyan. “If it turns out that the board is right, we will pay the fine. If they are wrong, we will complain.”
In addition, “Bagrat Tours” gave the certifying document of the agreement to the anti-competitive board. The Armenian side had added the miserable contract in the required documents of the Yerevan-Antalia-Yerevan flight.
Yesterday marked the second anniversary of “Bagrat Tours” INC and owner B. Navoyan recommended all the companies to not make the same mistake. Also, the board fined the “Aeroflot Russian airways” 100,000 drams yesterday. The airways had not informed how many discounted tickets it had sold during the “Fall-2005” sale and tricked the people.
“A woman from the far villages of Ijevan had heard about that and came to Yerevan to buy a ticket to go and see her long, lost husband,” said president of the board Ashot Shahnazaryan. She could not buy a ticket for a cheap price, so she couldn’t go. If you could have stated how many discounted tickets you were going to sell, then people would know if they can buy it or not. Then maybe none of this would have happened.” Representative of “Aeroflot” Gamarnik Ghahramanyan confessed that they had organized that sale because the company was on a tight budget.