Can someone please explain this enormous wastage?

[Alpha Leader]

For some years now, most of my airline tickets have come in the form of a booklet of cards with a magnetic strip on the reverse side and a perforation which allows you to detach a stub on the right side which doubles as a boarding pass.

Clearly, the idea is that this type of ticket has to be inserted into a reader/printer which then spits out the separated stub imprinted with a seat and gate number respectively.

However, in 99% of all cases I've been returned the complete ticket/stub form with a separate boarding pass attached.

Given that airlines keep on complaining about low margins, surely this obvious wastage (double costs for paper/printing etc.) of a high-volume stationery item should be addressed - quite apart from the environmental/recycling issue.

Can anyone shed a light on this?

[bealine]

First off, Alpha Leader, I can offer an explanation - it is sheer laziness, pure and simple!

The Tickets you refer to are known as "ATB stock" (Automated Ticket and Boarding Pass) and the magnetic strip on the obverse side contains all the data pertaining to your booking.

A complete set of these tickets (1 Outward Coupon, 1 Return Coupon, 1 Customer Receipt, 1 Audit Copy, 1 Accounts Copy and 1 Credit Card Signature Slip) costs in the region of £40 - stand back and gasp in amazement!!! Additionally, each separate Boarding Pass (of the Blue Envelope type with the magnetic strip that BA use) costs us 50p.

THIS IS THE REASON AIRLINES WANT YOU ON E-TICKETS SO BADLY even though we know we're losing revenue through e-ticket fiddles!

Now, as far as British Airways is concerned:

1. The "ATB" ticket can be fed into the Self-Service Check-In machines which makes use of the Boarding Card stub on the end of the ticket.

2. Most of our check-in desks have a computer keyboard with a "swipe" mechanism. The magnetic strip on the ATB's can be swiped, which then starts off the check-in process for us. At the end of the transaction, we can refuse the prompt "Print Boarding Pass" and enter "Front Feedc ATB Pass". We can then feed your ticket into the printer and print it as a Boarding Pass!

Unfortunately, this involves a handful of extra keystrokes and the computer defaults automatically to "Print Boarding Pass" so it's much easier just to hit the Return Key. Additionally, for the handful of people (like Bealine) that have practised this in the past, you find:

(a) Security Personnel don't always recognise it as a Boarding Pass and turn your client back.

(b) Swiping mechanisms quickly become dirty and fail.

(c) Printers easily become jammed when front-feeding and then fail to work on "normal" transactions.

(d) The procedure fails to work if a booking has been changed.

(e) Some suppliers have thoughtlessly over-printed the relevant area on the Boarding Pass Stub with the legend "CHECK-IN REQUIRED" so the details our printer supplies can't be read.

(f) American Airlines issue similar tickets but without the Magnetic Stripe so these can't be read!

From a company point of view, British Airways could probably save £500,000 or more each year if we all adopted the "Front Feed" practise and, you're dead right, the ecology would benefit too - that's why I always nicknamed it as the "Tree-Saver Boarding Pass!"

As from tomorrow, I'm back to "front feeding"!!!!

[MarkD]

bealine

Flying BA from ORK to dests via LHR means I don't get an e-ticket option, although if I book on the EI website ORK-LHR only I *can* use their e-ticket.

Computer compatibility I suppose.

However, if it costs £40 for a full ticket [probably more if four flights rather than two like the ones I get], the £5 discount usually offered for e-ticketing is quite a margin :D :D :D

[knobbygb]

Sorry to be cynical bealine, but £40? Really?

I can imagine that they're expensive, but the 50p per piece you quote for boarding cards seems more reasonable. I'd thus expect a full set of ATB to be perhaps £3 or £4 at the very most.

You are in a position to know, so I suppose I should believe you, but why so much? I mean, nearly every airline ticket I bought over the last couple of years was less than £40 discounting the tax - most were BA or BMI tickets from MAN to LHR at between £10 and £32 each return before tax. I bought over 25 of these and until recently they were all ATB. Where's the profit (although I realise you could ask the same question even before the extra £40 cost was considered :eek: )

Are you absolutley sure you haven't been fed a line by the penny-pinchers to get you to use less of them?

Apologies if I'm wrong (as usual).

[Memetic]

Before I start, I'm just SLF, so anyone in the know please jump in and correct what follows.

I understand that a lot of the cost comes in because all of these bits of paper need to be manually reconciled for inter and intra airline billing and paying the travel agents who issued the tickets. e.g. code shares, tickets boght in one country and changed in another where a supplement is paid, checking used legs against paid legs, refunds for part used tickets all need to be netted off.

Obvioulsy if it were all eletronic and on compatible systems this would be able to get less costly, but getting there will cost a lot, and at the end of the day passengers like tangible proof of thier imminent travel as opposed to a locator number.

At one point Swiss air were flying all the ticket stubs to an Indian IT company for entry into the reconcilliation system in order to reduce labour costs, not sure if they still do - perhaps others have followed suit?

You might find some details of the systems here : http://www.iata.org/idfs/settlement.htm

I've not read it, it did not look that gripping!

[BahrainLad]

I also thought the price was more like £5.

That's why when doing staff travel, you can help save the airline money by printing multiple round-trips on a single ticket, rather than on seperate tickets.

[ratsarrse]

and the computer defaults automatically to "Print Boarding Pass" so it's much easier just to hit the Return Key

This should be easy to fix - just change the software so the question reads 'print boarding pass y/n' with the default being 'n'
Everyone will be so used to hitting return that they'll find it really hard to print the boarding cards without a conscious effort.:)
I reckon this would take about an hour for a programmer to implement and test and probably considerably longer to go through whatever change management process exists.

[bealine]

The £5.00 cost refers to the actual cost of the blank stationery sets. The £40.00 includes:

1. Capital expenditure over 10 years of unique Mannesmann Tally ticket printers (£20,000 each) in all BA reservations centres. These machines were also supplied to Travel Agents at reduced prices, subsidised by BA. Consumables (printer ribbons) etc at grossly inflated prices (£50 each) because these machines are unique.

2. Labour costs in administering stock control, coupon reconciliation etc., Securicor (or Group 4) delivery of blank stocks etc. etc.

Granted, the £40.00 price tag is a glib "throwaway" line from a Reservations Training Course in the dim and distant past but the true costs must be fairly close.


;)

[knobbygb]

That sounds a lot more plausible having taken everything into account. Having worked in IT I know what you mean about overpriced consumables for 'unique' printers etc. £50 is NOT expensive comapred to some! Still, I'd be wary about anything I'm told by trainers. Most these days seem to have just read the course themselves for the first time the night before (apologies to the few professionals still out there).

I've always wondered why some rail companies are now printing tickets on similar stock when the guard, sorry 'Train Manager' still has one of the old 'hole punch-style' machines for marking tickets. Hmmm... E-tickets for trains. Now that WOULD be chaos!

[GBXRE]

With the quantities that BA order from their suppliers, the cost per individual ATB is less than a penny! AeroPrint who are certainly not the cheapest of suppliers, especially with the strength of the pound, quoted us just under £10k for one million ATBs. I understand that BA get theirs printed in Canada?

Mannesman ATB printers are not brilliant but at least better than the cr@p that IER put out! :D

[Tiger]

I read this posting with interest, and wonder why when someone within the industry and has figures and facts a member of the public starts doubting costs involved. Its the same with inflight catering and the tray costings. Yes I agree its does sound "wild" figures, but many of these costings labour/time etc are taken into account, and airline ticketing is not easy either to understand and to print. After working in Thomas Cook we had to print airline tickets and every week complete complicated forms which had to be correct and have zero mistakes listing ticket numbers etc.

[rsoman]

Tiger
****
After working in Thomas Cook we had to print airline tickets and every week complete complicated forms which had to be correct and have zero mistakes listing ticket numbers etc.
****

Difficult to believe!. While not denying that airline ticketing is difficult(atlest initially), the rest seems to be more a case of either inefficient support from your friendly GDS or needless bureaucracy from either the local BSP or your company accounting department.

I was working for quite a few years with one of the GDSs and was also responsible for introducing automated ticketing to the agents. What it did in our market, was cut out the paperwork dramatically!

Cheers

[Tiger]

Printing the ticket was an art in itself. The pages containing the tickets had to be lined up etc with the printer.
It was just painful.

This was when ticketing was branch based, not as its done now.

[Alpha Leader]

Many thanks, particuarly to bealine, for the interesting background. Appears to be a case of "what seemed a good idea at the time" isn't working as well as it should in practice....:(

[Curious Pax]

It becomes clearer why Easy/Ryanair etc can do it so much cheaper as they don't bother with such things! I would guess it's not the only example. (Yes, I know that BA et al give superior service in the sense of code-sharing, connections and that sort of stuff, and this gives an idea of how much that service costs).

[Boss Raptor]

Just gone to have a look at our ticket stock which is 'OPATB 2 TYPE E' made by a company in Germany called Hummel, with the magnetic strip etc. etc. - checked the last bill and have to say that we weren't charged anywhere near £5 a set either...if this is the same type as I am not a ticketing expert...

We have very low in-house accounting costs, rarely use IATA Clearing House and utilise the infrastructure of our handling agents/GSA sales offices so cant comment on the overall costs that can be incurred...

If we are talking the same ticket type/spec (sorry Bealine as I say I am not an expert) then I was not aware that we could use it as a boarding pass...umm and neither did our sales dept...

[rsoman]

Refer to Memetics post on 16 Jan
*****
Obvioulsy if it were all eletronic and on compatible systems this would be able to get less costly, but getting there will cost a lot, and at the end of the day passengers like tangible proof of thier imminent travel as opposed to a locator number.

At one point Swiss air were flying all the ticket stubs to an Indian IT company for entry into the reconcilliation system in order to reduce labour costs, not sure if they still do - perhaps others have followed suit?

*****
Memetic is right. Not all world markets have ATB systems, India for eg still have the OPTAT (the conventional printed tickets) and even the automated tickets for travel agents was introduced as recently as 4 years ago, Reason given for not introducing ATB (the ones with the boarding pass) was it is more expensive.

By the way as far as I know, British Airways as well as Lufthansa have followed Swiss Air in shifting most of the revenue accounting (ticket reconciliation etc) into India.
Singapore Airlines also develops some of its software in India .
The reason as Memetic pointed out is economics! Cheaper labour with a higher than average comprehension of English.

Cheers

[bealine]

Boss Raptor - You probably are using similar ticket stocks. However, knowing British Airways as I do, we probably pay a small fortune for having the "Corporate Logo" printed on each ticket........for some obscure reason, suppliers always seem to think BA has a limitless purse!

(That is why a Centralised Purchasing sysyem was implemented a few years ago and new rates, terms and conditions negotiated with suppliers.)

However, also knowing BA as I do, we probably purchased our present stocks five years ago so haven't yet been able to take advantage of price reductions!

:D "It's only money!!!":D

[Globaliser]

rsoman:
By the way as far as I know, British Airways as well as Lufthansa have followed Swiss Air in shifting most of the revenue accounting (ticket reconciliation etc) into India.
Singapore Airlines also develops some of its software in India .
The reason as Memetic pointed out is economics! Cheaper labour with a higher than average comprehension of English.Friends who are in IT in some of the big banks in London have also reported that local IT staff (often technically contractors) are being pushed out one way or another, to be replaced by contracts with Indian companies.

Quality has suffered as a result - not because the Indian companies and staff are unable to do the job, which in principle they are able to, but because in doing so the banks have pushed out a lot of embedded experience and knowledge, and the new contractors simply don't know the bank's systems well enough to fix the things that go wrong, let alone improve them.

Any similar symptoms with the airlines?

[rsoman]

Gobaliser
Valid point made . From my experience, I feel this happens because when such things are subcontracted out, the role of interaction between the subject experts and the software programmers were lacking in many cases.
With one of my previous employers who was in travel automation, we at the front end always used to feel that while some parts of the software seemed to have been developed by people with an excelent insight of what it is supposed to do, the same was sadly lacking in some other areas.

For any software to work well, the programmers have to have a close understanding with key functional persons in the client company, which seem to be lacking many times

As far as I know the software developement for airlines is mostly inhouse (the one I was talking about of SQ is a joint ventrue of theirs with a leading Indian firm) unlike Banks which seems to have mostly contracted it out.

Cheers

[bealine]

No - In fact, our Reservations Telephone system can route your call to Newcastle Upon Tyne, the USA or India (Delhi) according to the time of day and how busy the department is. To be honest, as a customer, the Indian staff are that good, you wouldn't know which office you were answered by!

The only thing that makes bealine a little sad, is that it is blatant exploitation of cheap labour. Now, I know that if we paid our Delhi staff the same salaries we get in the UK, it would spark riots in India, but I'm led to believe our labour costs are at least 10 times lower than at home. If companies are saving that much, I believe 50% of that saving should be spent in developing hospitals, schools and community projects to help in India's development.

Why are we human beings always ready to fight each other, but seldom want to help?:(

[rsoman]

Bealine
Be assured that your India based colleagues aren't starving!
Infact I had problems retaining some of my staff because they quote the example of BA (and many other) call centre staff salaries!
Having now got a chance to experience life in your part of the world, I can confidently say that my Indian salary while not enough to afford a holiday in Euro Disney or a QE2 cruise, did not exactly mean that I had to survive on one meal a day!
After all, a Big Mac (by the way made of the choicest Lamb!) cost me lesss than 50 Pence!
All we need are a few Ryans Airs and Easy Jets to escape the tedium of Indian Railways!
Now I do agree that things get bad like in cases I know (by the way not your company) when some companies bring over their Indian employees to work on site in Europe and US and pay them much less salary and fewer allowances compared to the locals who work alongside!
That is discrimination, plain and simple!
Cheers

[Globaliser]

bealine: To be honest, as a customer, the Indian staff are that good, you wouldn't know which office you were answered by!There was a news story here not so long ago about how call centre staff in India must, as part of their jobs, watch up to date episodes of programmes such as Eastenders and Coronation Street so that they can make small talk with the customers when they call. And how they have windows on their screens which show them the weather in the UK. Etc. etc.

Of course, it was all under the slant of "All our jobs are being sold down the river to these foreign parts ...", with which you may or may not agree, but the factual content of it was highly amusing.

rsoman: Now I do agree that things get bad like in cases I know (by the way not your company) when some companies bring over their Indian employees to work on site in Europe and US and pay them much less salary and fewer allowances compared to the locals who work alongside!
That is discrimination, plain and simple!Unfortunately, some of these IT companies that the banks have taken on do precisely that. Can't be good for the morale of staff who are already struggling at work.

[rsoman]

Globaliser
*****
There was a news story here not so long ago about how call centre staff in India must, as part of their jobs, watch up to date episodes of programmes such as Eastenders and Coronation Street so that they can make small talk with the customers when they call. And how they have windows on their screens which show them the weather in the UK. Etc. etc.

*****

I can confirm this is true in case of some companies (whether it is overdoing it, I am not commenting!).

However with reference to what Bealine was saying about redeploying some of the profits earned, the very fact that these operations are depolyed in India has meant that it has generated a spurt in employment for the educated unemployed and offers many of these people a chance for a much higher standard of living in their own country which is a big plus!It is when these cost savings are being attempted to be carried onto onsite work, that it becomes a matter of concern. However sadly such incidents are only increasing in recent times.

[Young Paul]

Hang on, I sense a problem here. If fewer people use the magnetic strip ticketing, then (given fixed overheads) the cost per ticket printed will increase. Imagine how much it would cost if just one ticket per year was produced in this format!!!!!






:p

[bealine]

You're dead right - our accountants will probably have a fit of apoplexy! (Maybe not such a bad thing?);)

[PAXboy]

I hve worked in telecomms and IT for 22 years. AND as contract AND seen the redundancy due to savings made...

But to tackle the original thread topic. I think that the cost quoted may well be correct for some accounting systems. If people do think of it as just being a piece of paper, then it is more than valid to remind them of the rest of the cost in the 'chain'.

I have spent some time helping to quantify the cost of handling telephone calls, both in and outbound. Normally, I was trying to convince the bean counters that if they got read of 'n' number of staff, that they might save money but that service would go down the pan. Not to mention that the telephone had better be answered by a human .... (lost argument) :rolleyes:

[Young Paul]

Joking aside, I think that whoever proposed the system that represents such an apparently significant overhead ought to be the first for the chop. Those who accepted it ought to be the second .....

[bealine]

What do you call a group of airline managers in a confrerence room?

A thicket!