The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is set to unveil plans today to charge four past and present executives of British Airways with criminal price-fixing offences.

In only the second criminal prosecution of its kind in the UK, the OFT will instigate charges against the four over allegations that they conspired with their counterparts at Virgin Atlantic to fix the price of fuel surcharges on long-haul flights.

Price-fixing — which was made a specific criminal offence, called the cartel offence, in 2002 — carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and unlimited fines.

The executives facing prosecution are Andrew Crawley, BA's head of sales; Martin George, the airline’s former commercial director; Iain Burns, its former head of communications; and Alan Burnett, former head of sales for the UK and Ireland.

They are alleged to have been involved in a scheme to fix fuel surcharges between August 2004 and January 2006. Fuel surcharges are added to standard ticket prices and were introduced to cover rising fuel costs. The racket caused 11 million British Airways customers to overpay for tickets at a total cost of more than £100 million.

Mr Burnett retired from BA in 2006 and Mr George and Mr Burns resigned the same year. In his resignation letter, Mr George admitted that “inappropriate conversations” about fuel surcharges may have taken place, adding that he was not personally involved. BA has been fined £270 million for its role in the cartel after a joint investigation by the OFT and the US Department of Justice. Virgin Atlantic avoided a fine after it approached the regulators to blow the whistle on the cartel.

The two airlines have also settled a £100 million class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of passengers who were overcharged because of the cartel.

The OFT is bringing the criminal charges against the BA executives emboldened by success in its maiden price-fixing prosecution. In June three former oil industry executives were given jail sentences of between 30 and 36 months for running a cartel that fixed the price of marine hoses, which are used to transfer oil from tankers to storage facilities.

Lawyers predicted that the sentences — the first time that executives have been jailed for what was previously an accepted practice — would send shockwaves through the business community. However, Philip Collins, the OFT chairman, blasted British business this month for a continuing laissez faire attitude toward cartel-type behaviour.

If convicted, the BA executives face the prospect of tougher sentences than in the marine hoses case because they are alleged to have fixed prices after the practice was criminalised in the UK. In sentencing the marine hoses executives, the judge said that he had taken into account the fact that they had begun their cartel long before price-fixing was outlawed.

However, in a warning to others, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, QC, said that for “anyone minded to commit an offence of this nature now . . . any likely sentence will be higher than that imposed in this case”.

The OFT and British Airways declined to comment.

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