Beginning of a new era: airlines all set to fly high with paperless tickets

Shauvik Ghosh
Posted: Sunday, Jun 01, 2008 at 2124 hrs IST
Updated: Sunday, Jun 01, 2008 at 2124 hrs IST

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New Delhi, May 31: because agents in Europe will avoid promoting India, as separate tickets would have to be issued escalating ticket cost. The higher cost will means higher outflow of foreign exchange (especially for interline travel). TAAI believes, inbound travel will only be in single digits. Poorer job seekers in Gulf countries will be unable to afford higher fares and profitable Middle East sectors will be badly affected. Domestic airlines will lose business to bigger foreign carriers, TAAI alleges.

TAAI has written to Civil Aviation Minster Praful Patel to intervene so as to allow for better preparedness of the Indian travel industry. While millions of Indians travel abroad annually, some issues of baggage charge, flight delays, and cancellations are yet to be addressed. Many of the agents have alleged that logistical issues in implementing e-tickets will push up costs.

Quoting rudimentary calculations travel agents say that airlines would incur around Rs 20 crore by way of courier charges only to move tickets from one place to another after the IATA June 1 deadline comes into force. The TAAI officials allege that Africa is only 60% e-ticket enabled while eastern block countries are 50% e-ticket enabled.

Worldwide travel agents are protesting. But they do not want to go to court because their world body of agencies itself is bogged own by serious flaws in its (agencies) programme.

IATA has asked all travel agents to surrender their paper tickets and those who do not comply will stand the risk of losing affiliation to IATA. While no fresh paper tickets will be issued from June 1, paper tickets already issued will be honoured.

But premier airlines solutions provider Amadeus has refuted some of TAAI’s claims. According to Ankur Bhatia, MD with Bird Group that owns Amadeus, in India over 50 airlines have had e-ticket percentages in excess of 95% while 70 of the 77 carriers sold in India last year are e-ticketable. He further adds that no carrier selling more than 500 tickets is not e-ticketable and India is 95% e-ticketing compliant and likely to achieve 100% e-ticketing deadline. According to Amadeus, there has been around 60% increase in e-tickets versus last year as opposed to a 17% increase in total tickets issued....

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