Areas of Activity

Project Glossary

A

  • ACH (Airlines Clearing House) – The ATA clearinghouse for interline billings.
  • AIA (ATPCO, IATA, ARC) – AIA is the organisation formed by ATPCO, IATA, and ARC to support the First & Final™ process.
  • ARC (Airlines Reporting Corp.) – ARC operates COMPASS® which houses transaction and prorate data for the purposes of settlement.
  • ATA (Air Transport Association) – The trade group for U.S.-based airlines.
    ATPCO – ATPCO, amongst other services, operates the Sales Exchange process whereby sales for First & Final™ transactions are extracted, prorated, and sent to the uplifting carrier.
  • Auto-Billing – A proposed feature of Integrated Settlement whereby a billing carrier is able to submit a list of uplifts. Integrated Settlement will then find the prorate (either a stored own prorate or an NFP) and create the necessary billing, settlement, and invoice files. A pro-forma invoice is sent to the billing carrier daily, and invoices are sent to the billing and billed carrier on settlement.

B

  • BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) – An IATA service for the settlement of ticket revenues between agents and carriers. BSP fees can appear on interline billing invoices. More information on BSP

C

  • CDA (Call Day Adjustment) –An adjustment based on the difference between the exchange rates of Miscellaneous items as submitted to the ICH and the exchange rate used on Call Day.
  • CH (Clearinghouse) – The general term and acronym for a clearinghouse, whether the ACH  or ICH.

D

  •  Digital Signature – A digital signature is analogous to its analog namesake and proves two things: that the claimed party generated the document, and that the document was not altered after being signed. Digital signatures are required on electronic invoices in some countries.

E

  • E-AWB (Electronic Air Waybill) – The electronic representation of the cargo air waybill. More information on E-freight
  • Electronic Presentation – A term used to specify a supporting document that is digital but not in a defined and structured format. The document might be a PDF file or an image that a computer can read but not extract data from. Similarly, a copy of the Revenue Accounting Manual could be pasted into Excel but would be useless to a computer trying to parse specific values.
  • E-Electronic Document – A term used to specify that the supporting document is in a defined and structured format which can be parsed by a computer. Example formats are IDEC, XML, or CSV.

F

  • F12 – The file that a carrier uploads to the clearinghouse on a weekly basis to complete settlement. This file does not contain all billing data; rather it contains the totals of each invoice being cleared.
  • F&F (First & Final) – Process in which two carriers agree to use a Neutral Fare Proration engine for interline billings. In agreeing to settle on a First & Final basis, they are also agreeing that rejects based on prorate values are not permitted.

G

  • GDS (Global Distribution System) – The services through which travel agents can book tickets. GDS charges can appear on interline billing invoices.
  • GSA (General Sales Agent) – The carrier sales representative for a given region or location.  GSA services, when provided by one carrier to another, are charged over a Miscellaneous invoice.

I

  • ICH (IATA Clearing House) – The IATA clearinghouse for interline billings. More information on ICH
  • IDEC (Interline Data Exchange Centre) – The term ‘IDEC’ is used to refer to the file format that currently supports an invoice with billings in a structured and computer-readable format. IDEC will continue to be used in the future but will be able to support new transaction types and all information needed to be considered an invoice. See More information on IDEC
  • IS (Integrated Settlement) – Integrated Settlement is the name for the collection of systems which provide the functionality behind Simplified Interline Settlement. For more information, see the vision.


M

  • Miscellaneous P Item – A “P item” is related to a passenger invoice. A Miscellaneous P Item can be charges for such things as codeshare commission and Flight Interruption Manifests (FIMs).
  • MRO (Maintenance/Repair/Overhaul) – Aircraft maintenance services that are sometimes performed by one carrier for another and then charged via an interline billing invoice.

N

  • NFP (Neutral Fare Prorate) – A prorate created by a “neutral” party, as currently used within First & Final™ settlement. Because of their neutral nature, NFPs are less likely to get rejected by the billed carrier, even outside of First & Final™. In the future, NFP values will be available to all carriers that wish to use them.
    • Final – Final NFP values will be similar to First & Final™ and supported by an agreement between the carriers stating that Final NFP values cannot be rejected.
    • Non-Final – Non-final NFP values are not supported by a bilateral agreement and can be rejected in case of dispute. Non-final NFP values offer the benefit of a lower likelihood of rejection.

R 

  • RAM (Revenue Accounting Manual) – The RAM is where most rules related to revenue accounting are documented. More information on RAM


S

  • SIS (Simplified Interline Settlement) – Simplifying Interline Settlement is the name of the entire project. See the introduction for more information.
  • Stored Own Prorate – A sales carrier will have the ability to upload prorated fares to Integrated Settlement and specify who may download those fares. Integrated Settlement will then store the prorates, at which point they are considered “stored own prorate”.
    Optionally, the sales carrier may specify that the prorates are not to be stored but only switched, in which case they’re sent directly to the planned uplifting carrier.

U

  • ULD Demurrage - The charges due to the owner of a Unit Load Device (ULD container) where the carrying airline has not returned it to the owning airline within the allowed time.


X

  • XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) – A structured file format similar to HTML as used in websites, which includes tags that indicate the meaning of content. For example, a tag <invoice_number> would specify that the invoice number follows. These tags allow for a more fluid document that does not rely on fixed positioning of data (as occurs in the IDEC format).