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3/  How international airline fares and rates are made

negotiation  between 50 or 60 countries over each adjustment in fare, change in the form of a baggage check or shift in an airline sales policy.

They resolved the dilemma by deciding that international fares and rates should be worked out by the airlines concerned, as the people best fitted to do the job - but with the proviso that no agreement would become effective until reviewed and approved by governments as the guardians of national and public interest.

[[underlined]]The role of the conferences[[underlined]]

This is where the IATA Traffic Conferences come in. [[underlined]]After[[underlined]] governments have decided bilaterally upon the exchange of rights, and [[underlined]]after[[underlined]] each decides individually what carriers to grant them to, those carriers meet in IATA as the agency through which to recommend the basis for the further agreements between governments which are necessary to put services into actual operation. Thus, while the Conferences are meetings of operators, they deal not only with the problems and requirements of airlines, but also with important phases of the relations between many nations.

Under these circumstances, the IATA Traffic Conferences are quasigovernmental agencies, responsible not to some other body of their Association, but to governments.  Not only their results, but the rules by which they reach them, must be approved by governments. And having delegated a certain measure of responsibility to the Conferences, governments have also insisted that they be equipped with a set of built-in checks and balances to ensure that national interests will be protected and that the airlines themselves will not be able to "gang up" on one another or on the public.

In ten years, the IATA Traffic Conferences have developed into a unique machinery for the mass production of international agreement - all the more remarkable because the agreements are voluntary in essence, must reconcile the widely divergent interests of many parties, are binding only by the unanimous consent of these parties, and are effective only after further scrutiny and approval of a different and higher set of authorities.

[[underlined]]Governments determine eligibility[[underlined]]

In terms of organization, the Conferences are part of the overall structure of IATA, a voluntary and cooperative agency of the airlines.  To be a member of IAT2A and of the Conferences, an airline must hold a certificate for scheduled air carriage from a government eligible for membership in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.  Thus, governments determine who may be a member of IATA.  Individual airlines may join IATA or stay out of it as best fits their own interests, and no properly certificated company which has wanted to join has been refused.

The terms of reference of the Conferences are set and their rules established by the IATA Executive Committee, which is in turn answerable to the General Meeting of IATA, in which every airline has an equal vote.