GDS/CRS Booking Policy for NACIL (AI/IC)

This is circular from NACIL(AI/IC). All Travel agents are requested to follow these giudelines while booking in Abacus and help Abacus to be a clean GDS.

CSL:CIRC:G30I:42
July 30, 2009
TO: ALL IATA AGENTS IN EASTERN INDIA

Dear Travel Partner,

It has been decided to raise an ADM equivalent of USD 5 (five) for every GDS abuse made by Agents while handling PNRs of passengers booked on AI/IC coded flights. You are therefore requested to be careful in avoiding such GDS misuse in your own interest.

A copy of GDS/CRS Booking Policy for NACIL (AI/IC) is given below for your reference and compliance:

As part of our continued efforts to reduce distribution costs NACIL (AI/IC) is updating GDS/CRS booking policy in line with industry participants. As you are aware GDS/CRS bill the airline every time a GDS/CRS enabled Travel Service Provider books, changes or cancels any airline segment. The booking policy is focused on encouraging our Travel Service Providers to clean up inactive segments and discourage any other practices that have negative inventory implications.

NACIL will be auditing all transactions to identify non-compliant practices. NACIL reserves the right to issue a monthly invoice or ADM (Agency Debit Memo) to recover GDS/CRS booking costs per segment plus an administrative service fee for any and all non-compliant practice. Compliance with the policy will reduce unnecessary costs while creating greater value for our shared customers through better seat availability and improved service.

The purpose of this policy is not to generate supplemental revenue for NACIL. Our endeavour is to reduce the cost associated with inactive segments and discourage any practice that adversely impacts the operation and finances of the airline due abuse of inventory and misuse of GDS/CRS enabled facilities. The best way to avoid fee and violations associated with this GDS/CRS policy is to make every effort to comply with the airline policy. As always, we are always available to support your efforts in case you have specific questions or concerns.

This policy applies to all Travel agents (Accredited and Non-Accredited; Domestic and International) and any person or entity accessing NACIL's Reservation System content directly or via the Internet or any other electronic means. It is the responsibility of the Travel Service Providers to ensure that all of its employees, across all locations are made familiar with this policy, and all future updates from NACIL either directly or through electronic media and GDS communications.

BOOKING / TICKETING PRACTICES
Canceling reservations
Segments must be canceled and inventory released immediately when a ticket has not been purchased in accordance with the fare rule, or when notified by a customer that travel is no longer needed, whichever comes first. Canceled space for one passenger shall not be used for another customer even if that customer desires an identical itinerary by adopting any internal substitution. A fresh request is obligated for the new customer, based on the then current availability and fares. Booking cancelled by the airline system due expiry of time-limit must also be cancelled in the GDS/CRS.

Churning
Churning refers to repeated canceling and rebooking of same itinerary in the same or different classes of service across one or more PNRs or GDS/CRSs. Churning is often done to circumvent ticketing time limits. This practice in totally unacceptable as it blocks seats from other Service Providers dis-servicing all of our customers.Your compliance with all booking and ticketing requirements is requested. Any passenger booking seen 3 or more times will be liable for cancellation of all existing bookings, with appropriate cost recovery and penal action. "Churning" is not permitted for any reason including, without limitation, to circumvent or extend ticketing time limits, to hold inventory, or to find a fare, or carry forward special remarks from one itinerary to another.

Dual CRS/GDS
A Travel Service Provider that uses more than one CRS/GDS in its business must book and ticket a specific passenger itinerary within the same CRS/GDS. Creation of ticketed passives in another PNR and in another GDS results in high costs to the airline for the same set of passengers, and therefore unacceptable.

Duplicate Bookings/Segments
Booking passengers on multiple flights or in multiple classes increases GDS booking fees for the airline and leads to spoilt inventory. All duplicate bookings generatedby a single Travel Service Provider are prohibited, including:
- Multiple itineraries for any number of passengers with the same passenger names, whether identical itineraries or not
- Reserving one or more seats on the same flight or different flights for the same time frame, regardless of the class of service or format used to make the reservations
- Additionally, creating a reservation where it is logically impossible to be used on each segment created across one or more PNRs or CRS/GDSs is not permitted e.g.violating traffic restrictions, minimum connect time, or impractical itineraries

Fictitious or Speculative Bookings
Fictitious/speculative bookings and ticket numbers holding onto airline inventory until a passenger or ticketing opportunity arises increases GDS booking fees for the airline, and reduces the availability of our product. Your cooperation is requested to use the GDS/CRS only when it relates directly to a passenger's request or intention to purchase a ticket.

Creating segments /passive or active/ or a combination of both causes financial losses to the airline.

Input of fictitious ticket numbers to hold a booking leads to a reduction of availability of our product in the market.

Examples of such bookings include reservations that list the following in the PNR:
- Schedule a/b/c
- Mouse/mickey and other common names
- Smith/a/b/c
- Test/Mr
Additionally, creating such PNRs to hold or block reservations due to anticipated demand, customer indecision, or for any reason including, without limitation, to circumvent any airline policy, reservation procedure or fare rules is not permitted.

Eliminating fictitious or speculative bookings will free up seats in your customers preferred class of service and better availability of seats for newer customers, while reducing unnecessary CRS/GDS costs to the airline. A desirable win-win for the travel Service Provider community, the traveler community as well as the airline is requested.

Group Bookings
An acceptable group booking may include segments entered passively into a CRS/GDS. These passive segments must match segments already existing in NACIL's Reservation System. Passive segments may only be entered at the time, and for the purpose, of ticket issuance.

Group bookings entered into a CRS/GDS that are not directly related to a customers' request and are subsequently canceled prior to ticketing are considered speculative.Groups booked in a manner designed to circumvent these procedures are subject to penalties and/or cancellation by the airline. NACIL prohibits creating speculative group bookings.

Inactive Segments
Inactive segments are segments in a PNR affected by a schedule change or flight cancellation or response to a non-direct sell. Inactive segments are sent to theService Provider queue in the GDS/CRS and can be identified with a status code of HX/NO/UC/UN/US.

All inactive segments must be cancelled from the GDS/CRS PNR at least 24 hours prior departure. Inactive segments that are not cancelled 24 hours prior to departure are subject to Cost Recovery Fee charges from AI/IC. Repeat and continued violations may incur additional penal action by the airlines.

Passive Segments
An acceptable passive segment is entered into a GDS/CRS for the purpose of ticketing. It must match an existing booking in NACIL's Reservations system. In theevent of a mismatch, a reject message is sent to the booking Service Provider and
the segment requires action at least 24 hours prior to flight departure.
Travel Service Providers must use claim PNR functionality when it is available and use it for ticketing instead of creating passive segments. The creation of passive segments when it is possible to claim an AI/IC created PNR instead, is not permitted.

In order to better control costs and eliminate abuse associated with the use of passive segments AI/IC participates in passive segment notification in GDS/CRSs which offer this enhancement. This means that whenever a travel Service Provider passively books an AI/IC segment, AI/IC receives a passive segment notification (PK,
PL, PU, PX) message at end transaction.

1. AI/IC will automatically validate each passive segment notification message to determine that a matching segment exists in the internal reservations system
2. If an identical segment does not exist within AI/IC's internal system a message will be sent back to the CRS/GDS PNR, changing the status code of the passive segment to "NO" (No Action Taken)
3. An SSR will also accompany the rejected segment stating that the segment containing the passive is not valid. Passive segment(s) may be rejected by AI/IC for
one or more of the following reasons:
a. Matching itinerary not found
b. Matching name not found
c. Matching number of passengers not found
d. Matching class of service not found
4. Industry standards require that passive segments be used "for the purpose of ticketing" only after a booking has been made in an airline's inventory system. NACIL does not allow passive segments to be used for other reasons, including the following:

a. To circumvent fare rules
b. To fulfill administrative functions

All violations therefore attract suitable action from the airline, not limited to raising ADMs or other financial recovery action.

Special Service Requests
We request you to wait for airline system response when first creating a PNR, or while closing an existing PNR with an end of transaction, before adding the SSR element. Thereafter you may retrieve the PNR and add your SSR requests and close the PNR by End of Transaction input. Separating the SSR input from normal PNR creation/update prevents creation of duplicate PNRs in NACIL system and potential violation.

When changing itineraries in a passenger name record (PNR), it is necessary to re-request any special service requests from the original booking. This includes unaccompanied minors and special meal requests. When an SSR message is needed for only part of the itinerary, the special service request must be flight specific andnot requested for all flights in the itinerary. Any wastages or financial costs and burden incurred by NACIL shall be duly passed upon to the ticketing agent or travel service provider.

Test or Training PNRs
The training mode or non-billable segment status codes provided by the CRS/GDS must
be used when testing situations, or training personnel. Creating PNRs for training
purposes using active sell segment status codes is prohibited.


Name Changes
All NACIL reservations require a valid first and last name as provided by the passenger. Travel Service Provider must provide customer's first and last names which are identical to those in the customer's passport.

Do not perform Name change or cancel the Names in the PNRs. Name changes are not permitted on reservations unless entered for the purpose of correcting a mis-spelling of the passenger's name. Contact the NACIL Reservation offices for assistance with mis-spellings to avoid cancellation of space.


Waitlist Segment
Travel Service Providers must not repeatedly create waitlist segments, which in any case do not increase the chance of waitlist confirmation. Agency must also avoid forced waitlist on closed flights.
All waitlist segments must be cancelled from the GDS/CRS PNR at least 24 hours prior departure. Waitlist segments that are not cancelled 24 hours prior to departure are subject to Cost Recovery Fee charges from AI/IC.

Invalid Ticketing
Travel Service Providers must not retain bookings with invalid ticket numbers. Invalid ticket numbers include restricted, used, refunded, voided, or non-existent ticket numbers.
Travel Service Providers must not issue confirmed tickets against bookings that are on request or non-confirmed status in NACIL's reservation system.
Travel service provider must ensure that the class code used for issuing ticket is identical to the code that exists on the PNR.


Ticketing Policy
Travel service provider must always use the latest and updated fares rather than pre-stored fares, and collect and report accurately all taxes, fees and surcharges imposed by all local and foreign governments.

Travel service provider must ensure collection of penalties for no-show, cancellation, reissue etc. as applicable.

Additionally, Travel Service Provider must adhere to the following :
- NACIL's time limits
- Do not reinstate/update dead PNRs (status HX,NO,UN,UC,US/HL)
- Do not cancel & add in the same transaction
- Applicable government regulations and requirements, and provide customer security information SSR DOCS/DOCA/DOCO) on PNR in the prescribed format as required
- Provide passenger mobile contact number on the relevant GDS phone field or OSI element to facilitate disruption handling
- Not create booking which violates the minimum connecting time requirement as defined by individual airlines
- Not create booking on non-existent flights and segments, invalid segments, or violate traffic restrictions, as defined or published by individual airlines
- Travel Service Provider must not separate Journey Control, Booking O & D, Married Segments for origin-destination single segment sale for any purpose, nor manipulate airline system logic

Policy violations
NACIL reserves the right to hold the Travel Service Provider responsible for any violations, and charge for any loss or damage caused. Authority for all interpretations of any and all violations will be entirely with NACIL.

NACIL reserves the right to cancel any booking, whether ticketed, or un-ticketed by Travel Service Providers in cases of non-compliance, or those who have been identified as non-compliant to any part of this policy.

NACIL further reserves the right to block any Travel Service Provider's access to view, book or ticket NACIL inventory at any time, and more specifically in case of violation of its policies.

Questions?
For questions concerning the NACIL's Booking Policy or debit memos issued by NACILplease submit questions by email to resauto@airindia.in For questions concerning GDS/CRS booking entries please contact your GDS/CRS provider.

(Kalyan Chatterjee)
Manager (Commercial)
f.General Manager (Commercial)