Press Release

Issued by The Air Charter Association.

August 12, 2014

To further enhance and improve the services that the Baltic Air Charter Association (BACA) offers to its members the organisation has launched a new BACA escrow service.

BACA has established an exclusive agreement with an experienced escrow company in the USA called Shelby Financial Corp, a company specializing in escrow services, to provide a secure deposit for funds being paid in advance to operators. The main advantage of this service, available to all BACA members, is that their payments for aircraft bookings will be 100% protected and safe.

When a booking is made by a broker the operator requests payment of a deposit (or all) of the charter price well in advance, this means there is a risk involved. If the operator should cease trading or get into financial difficulty during the intervening period, the advance payment may be lost, and the broker and client may have no options for the recovery of the funds.

The new BACA escrow account acts as a safe, independent depository for those advance funds (provided that all parties agreed to its use in each case), and the money can be forwarded to the operator nearer to, at the time of, or even after the flight date whichever is agreed by all concerned when the contract is set up.

The BACA escrow service is cost effective, quick and easy to use. In addition all transactions can be monitored online by the broker and operator. The cost of using the service is exactly the same, irrespective of the operator used or the level of risk.

Speaking about the new service BACA chairman Tony Coe advises “The BACA council was asked by members to provide a service for them. There was a need to protect both members and their clients from the potential financial difficulties that may arise when an operator is unable to provide the service for which they have already been paid (wholly or partly). This has occurred several times in recent years. The escrow service is a solution to that problem and I am delighted to be able to announce another excellent and beneficial service for BACA members.”