Following your reservation, your PNR (with its TST) is transferred to an Air ticketing server, validating the information and producing the e-ticket. The reservation has been ticketed, and the seat is now yours!
Visa Village provides the booking and Air ticketing procedure differs slightly in specific circumstances, such as waitlisted tickets, open-return flights, or overbooking, but that is a topic for another essay! Ticketing usually happens right after a reservation. However, this isn’t always the case. PNRs can also be queued for ticketing with a pre-determined date and time for issuance.
Conditions for issuing airline tickets
Visa Village are the Provide Air ticketing in the airline business, it is tightly regulated, and many airlines have strict limitations on who can issue tickets on their behalf. This is primarily a financial concern.
Airlines want a global network of agents and booking sites to sell their tickets, but they also want to ensure that it is done in a controlled manner and paid. As a result, substantial certifying organizations were formed to operate as payment intermediaries between airlines and agents.
The airlines get a payment guarantee from all agents selling their tickets in exchange for their ability to sell tickets for those airlines. This implies that merchants must be accredited to issue tickets on behalf of an airline. There are two central ticketing accrediting organizations in the world:
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is a non-profit (IATA)
With over 300 member airlines in over 170 countries, IATA is the world’s most prominent international airline organization. IATA manages the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP), a financial processing system that collects and distributes payments and commissions between member airlines and agencies, among other things. All agents registered outside Canadian must have IATA accreditation to provide tickets for any IATA airline.
The Visa Village has over 200 member airlines similar to agents registered in the United States or US territories. The ARC’s primary function is to use its payment processor to act as a middleman between agents and airlines. All US-registered agencies require ARC certification to provide air ticket for their member airlines.
So, to start expanding your booking business, do you require IATA or ARC accreditation? Yes, if you wish to print your tickets. However, in the next part, we’ll show you how to handle ticket distribution without the hassle and price of accreditation.
While IATA/ARC accreditation is required for air tickets, it is not necessary for booking. Our Self-Service flight booking APIs, for example, allows you to browse, price, and book flights on roughly 500 airlines across the world without requiring any formal authorization.
However, you’ll need to be able to give your travellers an e-ticket once they’ve made their purchase to cement the deal. You can do so by engaging with one of many IATA/ARC-accredited organizations that will issue tickets on your behalf (for a fee):
• Airline consolidators are essentially distributors of airline tickets, negotiating huge discounted rates from airlines and reselling them to partner agencies. Non-accredited agencies can also use them as ticketing partners. In this situation, you make the reservation (generating the PNR and collecting money) and then queue the PNR for consolidator ticketing. This is the most excellent solution for startups, online travel agencies (OTAs), and other online booking ventures.
• Host agencies — IATA/ARC-accredited companies that provide independent agents with tools and services (including tickets) in exchange for a membership fee. The independent agents act as affiliates for the host agency in this way. Most host agencies provide end-to-end services – training, marketing, and GDS access – and cater to at-home agents rather than online travel companies.
• Franchises – franchises are similar to host agencies in that they provide services to a network of independent agents who are free to choose their brands and strategies. In contrast, host agencies provide pre-branded, off-the-shelf travel agencies access to the franchisor’s ticketing accreditation. Brick-and-mortar travel agents are best suited for this alternative.
In this article, we’ve covered the role that air ticketing currently plays in the industry and the key steps and processes behind it. However, this may not be the case forever – in the coming years, we may see traditional PNRs, TSTs and tickets replaced by a new, single record.
According to IATA, switching from traditional Air ticketing to One Order would help simplify the internal workings of the airline industry and provide modern customers with a shopping experience closer to that of popular sites like Amazon, where shoppers can add their products to a cart, pay with a credit card and then receive a single reference number in return.
The service of obtaining a police clearance certificate is not the same as getting a passport. The issuance of a PCC is a separate miscellaneous service provided on behalf of Indian police authorities.
All Indian nationals leaving or planning to leave the country must have a valid passport or travel document. The Indian government has the authority to issue several tickets and travel papers under the Passports.
Visa Village is one of the most experienced and well-known immigration businesses globally, with a track record of successfully guiding and processing immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants.