E-ticket delay
Member airlines of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) say they will take five months longer than scheduled to implement interline e-ticketing, which was expected to be complete by the end of the year.
The timeline on which e-ticketing was to be implemented by December 31 was set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, but the airlines now say the system will not cover the entire industry until next May 31. Air Seychelles chairman David Savy said the deadline extension could put airlines' interline revenues at risk, which is something the airlines must deal with. However, Singapore Airlines chief executive CS Chew said interline e-ticketing had progressed as targeted and that 80 per cent of IATA members were expected to implement it by next April. Tom Murphy, IATA's senior vice president for industry distribution and financial services, said interline e-ticketing would not be completely ready by the end of the year because some airlines had no intention of stopping the issuing of paper tickets or using different distribution models. A survey in April showed 96.5 per cent of airlines had agreed to adopt interline e-ticketing.
Suchat Sritama The Nation
|
