Kenya Airways wins IATA accolades for promoting e-ticketing

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has praised the role played by Kenya Airways (KQ) in promoting e-ticketing (ET) by airlines in the East Africa region.

IATA, the regulator of airline industry worldwide, gave Kenya Airways, the national airline and the flag carrier of Kenya, a ‘Last Paper Award’ plaque engraved thus: “100% ET is now a reality. Thank you for helping us make history.”

The International Air Transport Association is the international industry trade group of airlines headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The main objective of the organisation is to assist airline companies to achieve lawful competition and uniformity in prices. The organisation also represents, leads and serves the airline industry in general.

IATA launched its four-year-long e-ticketing campaign in June 2004 as a means of simplifying business dealings. The programme has led to elimination of about 300 million paper tickets from the airline industry, saving member-airlines around US $3 billion annually.

Kenya Airways, based in Nairobi, started operations on February 4, 1977. It operates scheduled services throughout Africa and to Europe and the Indian subcontinent. While its main base is Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Moi International Airport in Mombasa serves as a focus city. Kenya Airways, set up after the break-up of the East African Community and the consequent collapse of East African Airways, was wholly owned by the Kenyan government until April 1996.

Kenyan media quoted Kevin Kinyanjui, IT director of Kenya Airways, as saying: “The carrier is 10 percentage points short of fully issuing e-tickets only. Hopefully, by end of this financial year, KQ will have achieved 100% e-compliance.”

Kenya Airways issued the first e-ticket in January 2005.

Kenya Airways, according to Kinyanjui, is slightly over 90% ET-compliant with the rest 10% of tickets being issued on paper in countries that are not yet e-ticket-compliant.

At present, Kenya Airways has 43 e-eligible destinations, 66 e-interline partners, 30 e-infant partners and e-interline agreements with eight Global Distribution Systems.

Meanwhile, according to data provided by the International Air Transport Association, Africa offers the best hope of growth for threatened airlines as the airline industry worldwide struggles to survive. Africa has emerged as one of the three strongest markets globally.

IATA’s latest data on passenger growth, based on figures gathered in July 2008, found that the number of people flying internationally had increased by 0.7%, compared with 4.2% growth earlier in 2008 and 8% in 2007. This has led the IATA to make gloomy forecasts of anticipated losses in the airline sector.

In contrast, Africa’s internal passenger growth was 18% during the same period; growth in travel between Africa and the Middle East continued to be strong at 6.9%; and travel between Africa and the south-west Pacific was 9.7%.

According to the IATA data, the strongest markets in July 2008 were within South America and markets connected to the Middle East and Africa.