Reuters Article - CO to stop offering Paper Tickets altogether.

I just read a Reuters article stating that CO will eliminate paper tickets
altogether by year's end. Not that it matters much to me - I seem to have done
well with the E-Ticket model. But what the article did say is that CO is
terminating "Interline ticket and *baggage* agreements" with other airlines
that don't have some form of E-Ticketing available.

I guess I'm concerned as to which airlines' agreements have been terminated
and hope one of them isn't SIA. I'll need them later this year.

See Article:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ntinental_dc_5






__________________________________

Regards,
Arnold.

(E-mail address altered, to prevent spamming. :-|
Remove all asterisks and the *hates*spam* to get true address.)

mag3 wrote:
well with the E-Ticket model. But what the article did say is that CO is
terminating "Interline ticket and *baggage* agreements" with other airlines
that don't have some form of E-Ticketing available.

##
Continental is an industry leader in interline eTicket technology and
currently has 20 eTicket partners. Continental currently has more than 180
interline ticketing and baggage agreements with other airlines worldwide.
##

It will be intersting to see what happens when someone books some Air-Tumbuktu
paper ticket that connects to a Continental flight. (as opposed to a CO flight
connecting to Air Tumbuktu).

Wouldn't Continental be forced to accept an official IATA ticket issued by
some travel agent in a far away land ?

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 23:17:17 -0400, nobody wrote:

what the article did say is that CO is terminating "Interline
ticket and *baggage* agreements" with other airlines
that don't have some form of E-Ticketing available.

There have been similar announcements of intent to terminate
interline ticketing agrreements with airlines that didn't have
interlineable e-ticketing by other airlines in the past. So
far as I know, none has actually followed through on them --
they appear to have been threats to pressure other airlines,
especially smaller and/or weaker ones, into e-ticketing.

The bigger airlines are trying to replace interlining with
code-sharing, and probably would like to get rid of
interlining altogether (except in code-sharing cases).
Interlining agreements expose the fraud in code-sharing
and the lie in airlines' claims that codesharing "enables
airlines to sell tickets and check baggage to more places".

See my article on this at:

http://hasbrouck.org/articles/alliances.html

##
Continental is an industry leader in interline eTicket technology and
currently has 20 eTicket partners. Continental currently has more than 180
interline ticketing and baggage agreements with other airlines worldwide.
##

It will be intersting to see what happens when someone books some Air-Tumbuktu
paper ticket that connects to a Continental flight. (as opposed to a CO flight
connecting to Air Tumbuktu).

Wouldn't Continental be forced to accept an official IATA ticket issued by
some travel agent in a far away land ?

The simple answer is, "No". Not every IATA airline has ticketing
agreements with every other IATA airline. If CO doesn't have an
agreement to accept tickets issued by ZZ (or issued by an agent ond
validated on ZZ), then CO doesn't have to accept such a ticket.
(Although they can at their discretion, and occasionally may.)

Since airlines like ZZ have representation in lots of places
where CO has no other representation, CO (or other major USA
airlines) would lose a lot of business if they followed through
on a threat to terminate their interline agreements with the vast
majority of airlines that don't have interline e-ticketing.

IATA has been working on e-ticket interlining standards, but
it's been very difficult and slow. As of now, e-ticket interlining
agreements are bilateral, not industry-wide or standards based.

The cost, difficulty, and time it has taken IATA to come up
with standards for interline e-ticketing are also significant
as an indication of the cost, difficulty, and time that are
likely be required to implement the new standards for additional
PNR content, and its transmission between reservation systems,
that will be required for CAPPS-II as currently envisioned. See:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000149.html

----------------
Edward Hasbrouck

http://hasbrouck.org

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(3rd edition, February 2004, now in bookstores)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
http://www.practicalnomad.com