Air Astana achieves 100% Electronic Tickets (E-Tickets)

In 2004, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), of which Air Astana is a member, set an ambitious goal to completely replace paper tickets with Electronic Tickets (E-Tickets) worldwide, by 1 June 2008.

The benefits of E-Tickets were significant, as it was calculated that on average, a paper ticket costs the industry up to USD 10.00 to produce and process, whilst an E-Ticket cost only USD 1.00 to process. This translated to a saving of almost USD 3 Billion per year worldwide. Additionally, an E-Ticket offers greater flexibility and convenience to the passenger and Travel Agent in regards to making changes to the itinerary.

In order to achieve 100% E-Tickets, many airlines had to implement robust computer programs, airports had to upgrade their computing infrastructure and the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) worldwide, which are accessed by Travel Agents, had to be upgraded – in all a huge undertaking costing millions of dollars and involving hundreds of people.

So you may ask, “what is the status of E-Tickets in Air Astana?”

“It fills me with enormous pride to see the progress that Air Astana has made in this project. After making a commitment to change its airline systems to Amadeus in early October 2006, a dedicated team of specialist from several departments within the airline set about the task of achieving this goal, and the airline issued its first E-Ticket in December 2006,” said Gerry Mitchell, Air Astana’s IT Director.

To-date, Air Astana has implemented E-Tickets on all 9 major GDS systems world-wide, it has signed and implemented 27 key E-Ticket Interline agreements, and has upgraded the computing infrastructure and introduced E-Ticketing procedures at all of its international and domestic airports, so that from 1 June, Air Astana will be fully 100% E-Ticket compliant.

Additionally, Air Astana played a leading role, working closely with IATA in establishing an e-BSP (Electronic Banking Settlement Plan) system for airlines and Travel Agents within Kazakhstan, and in doing so, becoming only the second country in the world, with such a sophisticated settlement system.

“The E-Ticket project was a major undertaking, involving many people within Air Astana including Reservations, Inventory, Sales and Marketing, Check-in staff, Airports, IT and Finance. It was a fantastic example of how close team-work and cooperation can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges – a truly fantastic effort by all concerned.

“Additionally, now that we are 100% E-Ticketable, the airline will be able to introduce other initiatives such as Internet Check-in, Self Check-in Kiosks and improved Web Distribution which were difficult with paper based systems” said Gerry.