Jet, Indian, Sahara to roll out new ticketing system

These IATA members will roll out billing settlement plan system by next month.

Jet Airways has teamed up with Indian Airlines and Air Sahara for an International Air Transport Association (IATA) sponsored ticketing initiative for domestic travel.

These three IATA members will roll out billing settlement plan (BSP) system by next month. BSP is a standardised ticketing and collecting system.

"The pilot project, carried out by airlines in association with IATA, was successful. With migration into BSP system through 2,000 travel agents, the cost of operations will go down substantially and ticketing process will be streamlined in an efficient way," industry sources said.

According to industry analysts, the credit risk for default in payment by a travel agent reduces significantly under the BSP system. "There are more cost benefits to travel agents as there is no duplication of process," sources said.

Jet Airways vice-president (marketing) Gaurang Shetty said Jet Airways would benefit from this BSP system as the airline has already rolled out an e-ticketing initiative. Jet is already a part of BSP systems in countries such as US, UK, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Gaurang said IATA has set the deadline to 2007 for complying electronic to ticketing standards by all airlines.

Under the BSP, neutral standard traffic documentation common to all airlines on BSP system is issued and there would be centralised reporting, billing and analysis of sales for domestic operations of Jet Airways, Air Sahara and Indian Airlines.

"This will eliminate the requirement of keeping three different coloured tickets of these airlines. This will also cut down the need for submitting three different checques and furnishing different statements to airlines by agents," they said.

In the post BSP regime, agents would report and make payments to IATA, which will in turn give it to airlines.