How PTS Helps Flight Only Businesses To Succeed

PTS support flight only businesses by providing affordable ATOL licenses, access to merchant services, and professional online software that has been designed specifically to help flight only companies. All of this is provided at an affordable rate, offering significantly better service for both you and your clients, with significant savings in time and profit margin.

We offer ATOL licenses in your own company name without the need for bonding or insurance. We are able to do this as PTS operates a franchise where the trust account underwrites the risk to the Air Travel Trust. We also provide professional merchant services (the ability to take both credit and debit card payments from your customers, either over the telephone or via a secure payment page on your website) through our PTS membership, where funds are released between 1 – 3 working days directly into the trust account. These customer funds can be used to either pay a consolidator or airline directly, and simultaneously releasing the profit to your business. Lastly, PTS provides all of our users with online software that has been designed for flight only companies, allowing you to manage individual flight bookings with minimal time and admin costs. All of this is available as part of our membership package, which costs £999.00 + vat, and then £99.00 + vat per month thereafter.

Once you are a PTS member, you can then apply for your ATOL at a cost of £740.00. This is payable directly to the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority). Upon receipt of payment, PTS will assist you with your ATOL application and liaise with the CAA for progress updates, as well providing the CAA with all the information they would require. When your ATOL has been granted, PTS charge £25.00 + vat each month for underwriting the risk to the Air Travel Trust, and you are restricted to the lower of 1000 passengers or £1,000,000 turnover. PTS provide the quarterly return to the CAA on numbers of passengers travelling (on which you get billed), whilst you are responsible for dealing with your annual renewal and dealing with any queries from the CAA.

Please see below for a typical booking with one person placing a flight booking, where they make payment into the trust account with one credit card transaction, and you (the member), instruct PTS to make one payment from trust to the consolidator: –

• Credit Card fee (Payment gateway fee from Opayo) £0.10
• Reconciliation Fee from PTS £0.50
• Payment request to the Consolidator £1.00
• Debit Fee from Trust Account (Banking fee) £0.24
• Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance (£1.00 per passenger) £1.00
• Trustee Remittance Fee £2.00
• Total* £4.84

* All prices are + VAT

In summary, all the above fees include the handling of the customer’s credit card payment, the reconciliation of the booking, paying the consolidator (or airline), the Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance (SAFI), and the Trustee costs. The residual money on the booking is your profit.

Merchant Services are offered to Flight Only companies though PTS where customer funds are available to use for payments to your consolidators (or airlines) within one working day of you processing the card payment. Card charges are between 1 – 1.3% for credit cards and 0.25 – 0.35% for debit cards. All card payments taken via your payment gateway with a reference number (each client on the PTS software is given a unique client reference) will add automatically to the corresponding clients’ booking saving you on reconciliation and allocation of funds.

The PTS software also allows you to set up supplier payments (this takes no longer than 15-20 seconds each payment) from trust, either as an individual payment or as a batch if you are paying a consolidator or airline for multiple bookings in one payment. The PTS software does everything a flight only company requires, with unlimited users at no additional cost.

If you’d like to discuss this further, please get in contact with one of Protected Trust Services’ (PTS) lovely staff members by calling 0207 190 9988. Or, you can visit our member support and travel trust account pages to learn more about how we protect you.