Date:12/08/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/08/12/stories/2003081204521200.htm

National

Now e-tickets for air travel

By Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore Aug. 11. It is perhaps indicative of pragmatic national priorities that in a week when Internet-based rail travel booking in India celebrates its first birthday, the air traveller in the country is finally able to book his journey the e-ticket way.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd launched its

Web-based ticket booking service a year ago and has rapidly grown to cover over 60 towns in the country. Selling about 2000 tickets a day from its website www.irctc.co.in, and delivering them by courier in a day or two to customers country-wide, the service is slated to double its reach by the year-end, reaching another 70 small towns. To mark its first birthday, IRCTC today launched a computerised lucky draw on its website, where one customer will have his ticket fare refunded every week.

The week also gives Indian air travellers their first taste of e-tickets — paperless bookings made, using one of the world's two global online booking services, the U.S.-based Galileo and the Spanish Amadeus. The two computerised booking systems cover almost all the world's airlines and are serviced by all leading air travel agents in India. Galileo India announced that it had issued its first e-ticket in India through the agents,

Thomas Cook and Sons, to the Tata Consultancy Services CEO, S. Ramadorai.

Amadeus India also announced that it had issued e-tickets to Indian customers of British Airways and Lufthansa. Which of them issued the first ticket in India — something that was bothering sections of the Indian media — may be less important than the fact that Indians can finally join the majority of air travellers abroad in dispensing with printed paper tickets. U.S.-based airlines claim that over 90 per cent of their domestic ticketing is done the paperless way. This week, Emirates Airlines began e-ticketing for the Australia-New Zealand routes.

How does e-ticketing work? A passenger can book and pay for a ticket from a home computer, or through a travel agent who is linked to a global distribution system like Amadeus or Galileo. He or she then notes down a code number and then states this at the check-in counter in the airport to receive the boarding pass.

Increasingly, international airports also feature self-operated touch screen kiosks which dispense with the boarding pass when a passenger enters the e-ticket code — thus reducing check-in queues.

In the three years since e-tickets were widely offered, airlines have made the choice easier for customers by combining their electronic ticketing systems. Thus, about eight airlines in the U.S. jointly offer a common e-ticket system. This means passengers can change travel plans or even switch to another airline with the same e-ticket.

It remains to be seen how fast Indian airports — where even entry into the departure area depends on the possession of a confirmed paper ticket — adapt to the new e-ticket era. Will a passenger with just a print out of an e-ticket code number be able to reach the check-in counter without a hassle? Perhaps it is a good thing that one of the first e-tickets has been bought by the head of India's largest software company. Perhaps Mr. Ramadorai will share his experience at the airport — and then work out a hassle-free system for the rest of us.