GENEVA The International Air Transport Association (IATA) today announced that global electronic ticketing (ET) penetration in its billing and settlement plans (BSPs) now stands at 79% with 9 months remaining until the December 31, 2007 deadline for 100% ET. Fully 210 airlines, responsible for 95% of IATA Billing Settlement Plan (BSP) ticketing volumes, are now issuing electronic tickets.
During the first quarter the largest increase in ET volumes issued by airlines based in that region occurred in the Middle East North Africa (+16% to 39%) as airlines embarked on a more aggressive ET roll-out. Within the region the highest ET use is in Morocco (62%) followed by Oman (60%) Qatar (57%) and Egypt (55%).
Regionally, MENA’s ET gains were followed by Africa (+12% to 58%), Americas (+5% to 78%), Asia Pacific (+8% to 67%), Europe (+4% to 82%), CIS (+3% to 10%), North Asia (+1% to 91%) and the United States (+1% to 93%).
The number of interline electronic ticketing agreements rose to over 1,000 during the same period. In the Middle East 9 airlines have implemented a total of 91 IET agreements. While there are some 12,000 paper interline ticketing agreements currently in place globally, the vast majority generate low volumes. Research conducted by IATA last year showed that typically 80% of an airline's interline volumes are generated by 20% of its interline partners. Carriers are therefore prioritising the conversion of high volume interline paper ticketing agreements to IET agreements. Airlines have told IATA that they expect to have about 3000 IET agreements in place by the end of this year.
| IATA Region |
ET% end 2006 |
ET% March 2007 |
| Global |
74% |
79% |
| United States |
92% |
93% |
| The Americas |
70% |
78% |
| Europe |
78% |
82% |
| Asia Pacific |
59% |
67% |
| Africa |
46% |
58% |
| North Asia |
90% |
91% |
| MENA |
23% |
39% |
| CIS |
7% |
10% |
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Editors Notes:
- IATA (International Air Transport Association) represents 250 airlines comprising 94% of international scheduled air traffic.
- IATA’s Simplifying the Business programme consists of five projects: electronic ticketing, common use self-service check-in, bar coded boarding passes, radio frequency identification (RFID) for aviation and IATA e-freight
- IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plans (BSPs) act as an interface between travel agents and airlines, providing a system that simplifies the selling, reporting, and remitting procedures of IATA-accredited passenger sales agents.
- At the end of 2006, there were 80 BSPs serving 359 airlines and covering more than 150 countries and territories.