Philippine Airlines, American Airlines launch interline e-ticketing

Philippine Airlines and American Airlines jointly launch tomorrow, 12 July 2005, electronic ticketing on their interline arrangement, enabling each carrier to issue e-tickets on the other's flights.

PAL and American Airlines passengers will be able to use a single e-ticket when their itineraries include travel on both carriers.

The e-ticketing deal with American is PAL's first with a partner airline and places the flag carrier among just 10% of  264 airlines belonging to the International Air Transport Association to offer interline e-ticketing.

PAL introduced e-ticketing on May 1, 2004 on flights between Manila and Cebu. It has since expanded the facility to cover services to eight more domestic points: Davao, Zamboanga, Puerto Princesa, Iloilo, Bacolod, General Santos, Legaspi and Cagayan de Oro.

PAL also offers e-ticketing on six of its busiest international routes - Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Hong Kong.

Likewise, the airline has enabled its partners in the travel trade to issue PAL e-tickets, further expanding the distribution channels for the new technology. Since October 2004, travel agents subscribing to the Abacus system in the Philippines and Hong Kong, and to Sabre in the U.S. and Canada have been able to issue PAL e-tickets to their customers.

Currently, over 60% of PAL ticket sales on eligible routes are in the form of e-tickets. Overall, more than 30% of all ticket sales throughout the PAL system are in e-tickets.

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