Tech trauma

New Delhi, May 23: Travel agents have opposed the International Air Transport Association’s (Iata) ruling to make e-ticket mandatory from next month. They want e-ticket and paper ticket to co-exist.

“While we agree that e-ticket makes things easier, it does not offer a complete solution. Therefore, it is advisable to keep both the billing systems operational,” said C.V Prasad, president of the Travel Agents Association of India (Taai).

The association has written to many central government ministers, including civil aviation minister Praful Patel and tourism minister Ambika Soni, seeking their intervention.

A complete switch to e-ticketing will have teething problems, according to Taai. For instance, Prasad said, the switch may be problematic for passengers who use multiple carriers to arrive at a destination, called an interline journey, as there may not be any arrangement among the carriers on e-tickets.

Besides, some local airports may not have the infrastructure to handle such tickets.

On the other hand, Iata says e-ticket will save on costs and make life easy for air travellers.

For travel agents, however, e-ticket may lead to a loss of business as flyers may log on the Internet to buy a ticket.

“The decision of Iata to convert to 100 per cent e-ticketing means that agents and airlines will not be able to issue paper tickets anymore. We have therefore written letters to airlines, individually requesting them to apprise us of the solutions they have for the problems that we see arising out of this transformation,” said Prasad.

Air India today said the carrier would move to e-ticketing by June 1, the Iata deadline. Officials from Air Deccan, Jet Airways and Kingfisher said they had already switched fully to e-ticketing.

Airlines save approximately $9 per ticket if they issue an e-ticket. According to Iata, it takes only $1 to process an e-ticket against $10 for a paper ticket. It estimates the global implementation of e-ticketing will save the industry up to $3 billion per annum.

Iata processes around 300 million paper tickets per year. In February this year, Iata admitted that e-ticket penetration in Africa, West Asia and North Africa, Russia and CIS was low. However, these regions represented only 8 per cent of the total volume.