Travel agents try to adapt to airline cuts in commissions.

Stung by a significant cut last month in airplane ticket commissions, L.A.-area travel agents are devising ways to expand other profit-making areas, as well as adding new customer service charges.

"We make more than 90 percent of our profits through ticket commissions, and (airlines) have cut commission rates by 20 percent," said Lynn Solky, owner of Designer Travel in Sherman Oaks, with a staff of seven agents. "So you ultimately pass the costs on to the customer."

For her company, the cut has meant imposing a $10 to $15 service charge per transaction to make up for the new ticket commission rate of 8 percent, down from 10 percent.

Those new service charges are not only being applied to airline ticket sales, but to any changes in travel plans, and to other services such as making hotel and car rental reservations.

Solky said she is contacting and discussing the new charges with all of her regular clients, and she has lost at least one as a result.

"I had a corporate customer drop me yesterday," she said. "They said they like me, but they can't have this charge on their bottom line, and they'll try to buy tickets directly from airlines."

Larger travel agencies such as Huntington Beach-based Uniglobe Travel (USA) LLC can ease the commission cut's effects somewhat by buying large volumes of tickets at a discount. So the company's Los Angeles office can end up with a softer hit from the recent airline commission reductions, said Sandy O'Connor, the company's director of sales and marketing.

"We may not be as affected as smaller agencies because we can buy in volume from certain carriers, but we still have to charge service fees," O'Connor said.

The "commission cap" instituted by airlines in February 1995 limited travel agents' commission to no more than $50 per round-trip ticket and $25 per one-way domestic flight.

Travel industry consultant Rolfe Shellenberger said the airlines don't want to put agencies out of business as much as make them beholden to an individual airline's own particular products. Companies like United Airlines are thus offering competitive deals to agencies that push their products.

Shellenberger, senior consultant for Rochester, Wisc.-based Runsheimer International, said he expects non-personal ticket sales, such as those made through the Internet, to increase over the next few years. However, this need not hurt agencies that position themselves as Internet sellers, and that offer other ways to serve customers quickly.

"The cheapest and fastest way to sell tickets is not over the phone, it's with Internet, fax and email, things like that," said Shellenberger. "There is opportunity for agencies to work like this."

Concern among travel agents has been rising since Sept. 18, when United Airlines announced it would cut commissions to 8 percent, a move followed within two weeks by Delta Airlines and American Airlines and nearly all other domestic carriers. Foreign carriers such as Lufthansa, Canadian Airlines and Swiss Air have also followed suit.

United said its decision was an effort to reduce its third-largest operating expense - commissions to travel agents, who sell 80 percent of airline tickets, said United spokesman Tony Molinaro. (About 19 percent of tickets are bought directly from airlines and the rest through other channels such as the Internet, industry sources said.)