American Airlines
will become the first airline in the world to offer interline electronic
ticketing with all its global alliance partners when it completes the roll
out of the service with Aer Lingus and Iberia in the coming days, keeping
oneworld firmly on track to becoming the first airline grouping offering
this customer convenience between all its members.
Interline e-ticketing—which enables passengers to use a single
electronic ticket when their itineraries include flights on more than one
airline—is now in place between ten of the 28 potential pairings of
oneworld partners, with another seven pairs on schedule to offer the
service during the next couple of months.

By then, interline e-ticketing will be in place to cover more than 90 per
cent of passengers connecting worldwide between oneworld member airlines.
The rest of the alliance’s network, extending to more than 573
destinations in 135 countries, will offer the service by the end of this
year.

American Airlines set oneworld’s interline e-ticketing progamme running
with partner Finnair in May 2002, becoming the world’s first airlines
based on separate continents to introduce this service. American connected
up with LanChile last July, with Cathay Pacific and Qantas in November and
British Airways in April.

British Airways expects to be the second oneworld member to offer
interline e-ticketing with all other oneworld members—making it also
the second airline in the world to provide this convenience with all its
global alliance partners. Besides its American Airlines link, it has been
offering the service with Qantas since April and in the past few days has
launched it too with Finnair. It aims to extend it to Aer Lingus later
this month, with the other four oneworld partners linked up by the end of
August.

e-tickets offer consumers many advantages. They cannot be lost or stolen.
They make check-in quicker and smoother, helping eliminate queues at
airports by giving customers access to the speed and convenience of new
automation features, such as self-service check-in devices.

Passengers with e-tickets have the ability to rebook between airlines with
interline e-ticket agreements without having to obtain a paper ticket
first. Previously, they were required to convert their e-ticket into a
paper ticket before transferring between carriers.

Interline e-ticketing eliminates the need for paper tickets, enabling
faster, easier connections between carriers. Customers with electronic
tickets traveling on a journey involving a transfer between two airlines
can be checked right through to their final destination, without the need
for traditional paper tickets, eliminating queues and making connections
smoother and more reliable.

Besides enabling them to respond to this consumer preference, e-tickets
and interline e-ticketing also provide millions of dollars a year in
savings for the airlines, by eliminating costly paper tickets and
processes.

Announcing the landmark during a oneworld summit meeting in Singapore,
American Airlines’ Senior Vice-President Planning Henry Joyner said:
“American Airlines’ customers can now enjoy the convenience that interline
electronic ticketing offers with all our oneworld partners—a first for
any global alliance. By the year-end, when all oneworld partner airlines
have fully implemented interline e-ticketing with one another, customers
traveling on all oneworld itineraries will enjoy even smoother connections
among all the alliance member carriers.”

Beyond its oneworld partners, American now offers interline e-ticketing
convenience with 15 carriers, including most of the larger US airlines—
Alaska, America West, ATA, Aloha, Continental, Delta, Hawaiian, Midwest,
Northwest, United and US Airways. American also has interline e-ticketing
agreements with KLM and Copa Airlines.

oneworld is the world’s leading quality airline alliance. Its eight
airlines and their affiliates carried more than 220 million passengers
last year on a combined fleet of almost 2,000 aircraft, earning revenues
of some US$50 billion. Members of any oneworld airline’s frequent flyer
programme can earn awards and points on eligible fares and redeem them
throughout the alliance’s network. oneworld was recently named the World’s
Leading Airline Alliance in the World Travel Awards, based on votes cast
by 80,000 travel agencies professionals from more than 200 countries.
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