Hexaware technologies

During check-in at the airport counter after proper identification, the passenger is issued a boarding pass by referring to the record in the carrier's system, not to a conventional paper-based ticket. IATA estimates that the cost of the conventional paper ticket is typically US $ 8 while an electronic ticket costs between US $ 1 and US $ 2. The economies arising from the adoption of electronic ticketing have led to the rapid growth of its use.

When airline executives and IT specialists met in a pub in the English Midlands, ten years ago, to plan the first ever Internet flight booking service, few suspected that this would spawn a revolution in the industry.Electronic ticketing now accounts for 38 percent of

tickets sold worldwide and the International Air Transport Association wants the 265 airlines under its wing to achieve 100 percent paperless ticketing within the next two years.

IATA says that the industry will save three-billion-dollars annually. Wider use of new electronic technologies for self service check-in, luggage handling and freight could offer even more cost savings in the years to come. Indirect costs associated with paper tickets will decrease as majority of the airlines are adopting e-ticketing.

How does e-ticketing happen?

E-ticketing generates an electronic record of ticket details and maintains the status of the ticket updated at every stage from the passenger using each of the flight coupons, reconciling post flight payments, processing refunds, to re-issuing or generating management reports. The distribution and supply chain for airlines has also been transformed because of online travel and airlines websites such as Orbitz & Hotwire. The complexity of global electronic ticketing solution is compounded when e-tickets are issued by different legacy based computerized reservation systems.

The E-tickets are issued by the host airline agents, common reservation systems and other partner airlines based on bilateral agreements. These e-tickets are then stored in the database. The Passenger Reservation Record in the reservation systems is updated with the electronic ticket number upon its issuance in the e-ticket database. Before departure the Check-in System retrieves the Passenger Name List from the Reservation system. This is interfaced with the e-ticket database to display or update the status of the flight coupon. Utilized coupons are in turn reported to the Revenue Accounting System.

Why e-ticket?

EDIFACT which stands for Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Trade messages is a message format or protocol used by airlines to send or receive data across disparate systems. Airlines use a series of EDIFACT messages to communicate among the respective host systems. The successful implementation of industry wide e- ticketing will depend on handling complex situations. Cited here are a few typical scenarios.

-Systems need to communicate with each other and report a passenger who has an e-ticket issued by Airline A, uplifted by Airline B, on a code share flight operated by Airline C and checked in by Airline D.

-Find an e-ticket for a passenger who does not have a booking or is not aware of the original booking date and time, or is not aware of the issuing airline.

-Passengers using restricted tickets who wish to change airlines but have limited options.

International Air Transport Association, IATA, has eloquently summarized the following merits of e-ticketing.

	Smooth handling of itinerary changes and last minute travel decisions.
	Say good Bye to "lost tickets"
	Elimination of printing, postage, shipping, storage and accounting costs
	Increasing usage of self-service check-in helps reduce airport counter space
	More efficient Revenue Accounting
	Convenience to the passenger: In case of loss of the Passenger Name Record number, the airline can retrieve travel details with valid photo identification such as passport or driving license.

Book, Pay & Fly

“Book, pay and fly” is what most airlines are offering their customers today. But is the whole process of e-ticketing easy? Are airlines providing their customers with high quality e-ticketing services? We need to develop a better understanding of how consumers evaluate these “e-ticketing” services and how we can serve them better.