On top of the cancellation of all London-flights Saturday, due to a IT-problem, BA said yesterday that British Airways and sister carrier Iberia will impose a booking fee of £8 on all sales through global distribution systems (GDSs) from November.

BA has written to agents today to inform them of the charge, which will be levied from November 1.

The move sees the IAG-owned carriers follow the lead of rival Lufthansa which introduced a €16 on GDS bookings in September 2015.

In a statement, the airlines said: “BA and Iberia have been playing a leading role in innovations involving [airline association IATA’s] New Distribution Capability (NDC).

“This technology brings customers, agents and airlines benefits in merchandising flexibility and richer content.

“We will continue to work with the GDS providers to distribute our content to our valued agency partners, however these systems and their traditional technology solutions currently carry significantly greater costs to BA and IB.”

The charge will apply “to any bookings not made using an NDC based connection, or through other low-cost channels, such as our websites, airline sales offices and call-centres”.

BA and Iberia said the fee covers “the additional costs applied through these channels”.

The airlines informed trade partners: “We appreciate this represents significant change for your business.

“We have developed a wide range of NDC based connections including direct NDC connections, aggregators or self booking tools connected via NDC and an IAG booking portal.”