The International Air Transport Authority (IATA) and Amadeus India are pushing for the introduction of electronic ticketing in India by the end of this year. Currently, some international airlines offer e-tickets, which could be in the form of an e-mail or an SMS message, for flights to India. However, the process is yet to take off in India.
Though there are no major procedures involved, e-tickets cannot be issued without the approval of the bureau of civil aviation. "The problem is that a manual ticket is required for identification and security concerns at the airport," said Kiran Yadav, manager, IATA -- distribution services, India, adding, "But the talks are on."
He was speaking on the sidelines of the Amadeus Bond Customer Conference held here between August 16 and August 18).
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"Instead of the manual ticket, airport security officials can be asked to check the itinerary receipt which has to be issued," said Ankur Bhatia, managing director, Indian sub-continent, Amadeus India. Amadeus India is currently working on an e-ticket project with British Airways.
Bhatia also asserted that there were substantial savings involved in the e-ticketing process. "Our research shows that while it takes $10 to get a ticket manually processed, the cost for the same for an e-ticket is $1," he said.
IATA is also trying to bring in the nearly 1,000 non-IATA agents under the uniform billing and settlement plan (BSP) procedure. "This is part of a plan to push the automation step further," said Yadav. Currently there are 1,700 IATA agents using BSP.
BSP is a system that simplifies selling, reporting and remitting procedures through a neutral traffic document used by agents on behalf of all BSP participating airlines. A data processing centre processes all the relevant data and produces a billing analysis for each agent and airline. Amadeus offers such a system.