Virtual E - Ticket

Electronic sales of air tickets are skipping by January 1, 2008, according to the order of the International Air Transport Association (International Air Transport Association - Iata), all airlines must introduce electronic tickets. Electronic tickets, or E -Tickets, are tickets purchased on the Internet at any time of the day in a matter of minutes without losing time and nerves at the box office. Unlike a paper ticket, it is impossible to lose E-Ticket.

The purchase data is stored in the computer and, in order to get on the flight, a person needs only to present a passport at the registration rack and get a landing card. In Europe and the USA, E-Tickets already accounts for 97% of all tickets sold. In Russia - no more than 16%. Moreover, in our country its own e-Ticketing: with bursts at the airport and malfunctions of the electronic sales system.

Today, only four Russian airlines are selling tickets via the Internet: Aeroflot, Transaero, Siberia and the Sky Express discounter. However, the system does not work in all directions.

Transaero was the first: she launched E-Ticketing in March this year. However, the first one does not mean the best. The day before yesterday, the correspondent of Gazeta failed to register on the company's website, without which it is impossible to purchase an electronic ticket. The computer stubbornly wrote that the column “place of residence”, where Moscow was indicated, contains irregular symbols. After five attempts, the correspondent's nerves were handed over, and the ticket was never bought.

Aeroflot did not have problems with registration, but it did not work out to purchase a ticket either. The site said that for technical reasons, use the right to buy a ticket only a day after registration. What if an urgent departure?

Hope to buy a ticket via the Internet died on the Sky Express website. It would seem: the Discounter company, it has no other ways to buy a ticket, except via the Internet, it means that the system should work perfectly. But the path from the beginning of registration to the moment when it is necessary to enter the credit card data, took about an hour. But Iata promised that buying an electronic ticket would take no more than 10 minutes. Apparently not in Russia.

However, you should not generalize. Siberia, for example, was surprised by efficiency. It took only 5 minutes to register.

In theory, at the airport, a passenger with an electronic ticket should have an advantage: airlines at his own expense are set at the airports of the ci -registration kiosks, where a person dials his ticket number, after which he receives a landing coupon and does not need to stand in line for registration. In Moscow, however, such kiosks are still only in Sheremetyevo. In Domodedovo, as the Gazeta correspondent told in the airport press service, they will earn by the end of November. And in Vnukovo, according to the head of the press service of the Airport, Konstantin Konanyin, there are no such plans, since the airlines do not show initiatives. In other Russian regions, things are even worse.

One gets the impression that the Russian air industry is not aimed at observing the installed IATA deadline. “Iata is not a decree to our airlines. They primarily think about their business. And the Internet sales system seriously undermines the agency sale of tickets. Airlines receive big profits from such a sale - their loss does not compensate for the fact that companies do not need to spend money on tickets for tickets and employees who work with them. This is completely different money, ”the expert of the aviation market admitted to the correspondent of the Aviation Market, who wished to remain an unknown. Oleg Panteleev, head of the analytical service of the Aviaport agency, on the contrary, is not inclined to downplay the authority of IATA. “This IATA requirement applies not only to its members (only seven Russian airlines are included in the association. -“ Gazeta ”). It applies to all carriers connected to the BSP mutual settlement system, the BSP will be completely excluded from BSP, ”Panteleev said. According to him, many people work in BSP among Russian companies, exceptions are excluding only domestic flights." And without a system of electronic tickets, it will be difficult to be presented in the foreign market, " - - - - - - - - - - Panteleev explained.

10.10.2007 / Elena Ogneva, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 190 dated 10/11/2007.