Sabre Airline Solutions is on course to add Gulf Air to its Interline Electronic Ticketing (IET) Hub.The Middle Eastern carrier is expected to ‘go live’ during the third quarter of this year. It will join 57 other airlines already e-ticketing with Sabre through the hub.

The IET Hub is one part of the two-year, full-service electronic ticketing project Sabre Airline Solutions is undertaking for Gulf Air. Other elements include enabling e-ticketing through the airline’s own direct booking channels (online and CTOs), as well as through each of the five major GDSs and with third-party ground handlers.

The project is based around the ticketing component of the SabreSonic Passenger Solutions suite of traveller management technology—part of a portfolio of more than 100 integrated products designed to help airlines market themselves, sell their products, serve their customers and operate more effectively. It will allow Gulf Air to stay hosted on its independent reservations system while issuing electronic records within the Sabre electronic ticketing database.

Other airlines using Sabre’s IET Hub include American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Continental, Delta, Emirates, JAL, Qantas and Singapore Airlines. Sabre is expecting 11 more airlines to join during the third quarter, bringing the total number of participants to 69.

Sabre Airline Solutions has successfully introduced hosted e-ticketing capabilities for Gulf Air in the airline’s reservation offices for flights to and from Bahrain, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, London, Singapore, Sydney, Johannesburg, Athens, Larnaca, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Karachi, Dublin, Dubai, Mumbai and Cairo.

Sabre Airline Solutions’ consulting team assisted Gulf Air with the implementation. Nejib Ben-Khedher, president and managing partner of the aviation consulting practice at Sabre Airline Solutions, said: “There’s no doubt that e-ticketing is helping carriers around the world to reduce costs and increase productivity. As IATA’s end of 2007 deadline for the phase-out of paper tickets approaches, we are speaking to more and more carriers who need help to implement e-ticketing smoothly and efficiently. Our IET Hub, which helps simplify e-ticketing between carriers regardless of where their reservation systems are hosted, is attracting a lot of attention.”

Gulf Air’s GDS e-ticketing initiative is also under way. It has rolled out the capability completely in Abacus in South East Asia, in Sabre in the Arabian Gulf countries, Australia, Greece and Cyprus, and in Galileo and Amadeus in the United Kingdom. Tests are under way for Worldspan in the Arabian Gulf. Further markets will be opened in the GDSs shortly.

“E-ticketing is one of many initiatives Gulf Air has been working towards with our technology partner, Sabre Airline Solutions, for simplifying travel processes and enhancing our customers’ experience,” said Jalal AlQassab, the airline’s vice-president of information technology. “We are delighted with our achievements in host and GDS e-ticketing. With the activation of IET we progress further towards our goal of achieving 100 percent e-ticketing by the end of 2007.”

The project ultimately will include an integrated departure control system. This will allow the airline to create a copy of an electronic ticket in its departure control system, change the status of the coupon to reflect various stages of the departure control process, over-ride or change the status of e-tickets and purge used e-tickets from its system.
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