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Paperless e-ticketing brings many advantages. It saves a person a visit to the offices of airlines or travel agents as well as the need to carry around huge amounts of cash. That is why e-ticketing has gained popularity among air travellers and the IATA has planned to make ticketing fully electronic by May 31, 2008. Before making air-ticketing fully electronic, the following issues need to be addressed.

The login time should be extended as most travellers’ ‘session expires’ before they complete the booking process. This causes inconvenience, especially to those who book tickets at the last minute.

More powerful and high-speed servers must be used for e-ticketing as many people login at the same time, and the servers often cannot cope with the load. This situation may worsen when the switchover to e-ticketing takes place in May 2008.

A reasonable tariff must replace differential rates as the present system — of pricing tickets based on the time gap between the date of booking and day of journey — is too uncertain.

S. Nallasivan, Tirunelveli

It is a good trend that air travel is becoming more and more popular among the middle- and upper-classes, who have taken to online booking in a big way. Swelling income levels have made e-ticketing popular among air-travellers. Airlines must acquire all the latest software to ensure good services for their clients.

T.S. Sundareswaran, New Delhi

In the age of convenience, e-ticketing is certainly the way forward. Airlines in India have woken up a bit late to its advantages and the savings it can bring. Travel agents — who were against e-tickets sometime back — have now started issuing e-tickets.

Apart from simplifying the entire process, it is customer friendly too.

Now, many travel-related sites, such as makemytrip, cleartrip, etc., provide information on various flight options available on any given day and sector and fare-points, thereby making informed decisions much easier. The dependence on travel agents has reduced drastically, except for overseas travel.

Krithivasan, e-mail

e-ticketing has become quite common these days. According to reports, in India, 80 per cent of bookings for air-travel are done electronically and the figure might even go up to 100 per cent in the near future.

The distinct advantages in e-booking are the savings from commissions charged by travel agents, avoiding repeated visits to airline offices, etc. The credit facility offered by the banks through the credit cards and checking the availability of tickets along and the fares and routes are some of the other advantages of booking tickets online.

On the flip side, as cyber-crimes and fraudulent use of credit cards are on the rise, the security aspects should be taken care of and monitored.

T.R. Anandan, Coimbatore

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