New system for air tickets

JAKARTA (JP): Domestic travelers will enjoy greater freedom in choosing who they fly with next year by using endorsable tickets issued by any of the country's six scheduled airlines.

The new domestic ticketing system will be provided under an agreement signed by the six airlines yesterday.

The agreement on the endorsable ticketing system was signed by the chairman of the Indonesian Air Carriers Association, Soelarto Hadisumarto, the International Air Transport Association's general manager for Indonesia, Djuarsa Joedadibrata, and Bank Central Asia (BCA) president Abdullah Ali.

Soelarto said BCA would act as the coordinator or clearing bank for the billing system of the scheme to start in January.

"We still have to prepare travel agents and computer systems for the new ticketing system," he said.

The six airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Merpati Nusantara Airlines, Bouraq Indonesia, Mandala Airlines, Sempati Air and Dirgantara Air Service, began discussing the idea of endorsable tickets about two years ago in a bid to end their price war.

But the scheme's implementation was delayed several times after the airlines signed a preliminary agreement in November 1995. The problems affecting the introduction of the system were mainly technical, including the validity of endorsable tickets, baggage handling, insurance, accounting systems, documentation and billing.

Soelarto said that rules for the new system would be drafted soon because endorsable tickets, to be sold only by travel agents, could not be discounted and, therefore, their prices would be higher than non-endorsable tickets.

Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto, who witnessed the agreement at his office, said yesterday that any companies found violating the system would face a service route cut as the toughest sanction.

He refused to give further details. (icn)