Vietnam Airlines to sell e-tickets in May 2007

Vietnam Airlines will officially provide e-tickets as of May 2007. Previously the airline replaced traditional paper tickets by e-tickets for some air routes on a trial basis.

According to Vietnam Airlines, passengers only need to provide their IDs or passports to check in after they make electronic bookings with the Vietnam airlines. Credit card holders can make the payment for their air tickets through the Internet. They then will receive an email, which confirms the booking and payment as well as includes necessary information about the flight.

If passengers don’t have credit cards they will still need to go to an air ticket agent to get confirmation. However, instead of being provided a thick paper air ticket like what they get now, passengers will be given a much more simple ticket which contains information about the flight.

Vietnam E-ticket is one of measures to cut cost and raise service quality, which is initiated by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). According to this organization, the expense to issue a paper ticket is around $10 compared to $1 for an e-ticket. In Vietnam it is estimated to cost 20-30 cents to issue an e-ticket, just 10% of the cost of paper tickets. IATA hopes that by 2007 e-tickets will be widely used worldwide, helping the world’s aviation industry save up to $3bil every year.

Vietnam Airlines has cooperated with airport security forces to deal with initial difficulties related to security check of passengers using e-tickets.

(Source: Dan Tri)