09 September 2008

V Australia flies around red tape

BRISBANE Ã¢â¬' VIRGIN Blue has set up its own travel agent payment system to get round bureaucratic red tape.

The system allows it to sell tickets online for its new international airline V Australia.

Ã¢â¬~¨Ã¢â¬~¨IATA refused to offer V Australia tickets through its international Billing and Settlement Plan until the new airline had received its Air Operator's Certificate.

And V Australia cannot receive its AOC until it takes delivery of its delayed B777-300ER aircraft.

V Australia has developed a payment system called the V Australia settlement plan in partnership with travel payment specialists, eNett International.

Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey said the airline and eNett had developed a simple solution for agents to sell V Australia tickets that had streamlined settlement and reconciliation, through a dedicated web portal.

Godfrey said V Australia had intended initially to work through IATA's BSP.

"However, as access was not available in the time frame required, we preferred to develop an independent solution," he said.

This had left V Australia with the Internet as the only way of selling its tickets.

Andy McCreedy, managing director, eNett International, said, Ã¢â¬ÅâœThis exciting and innovative industry development challenges convention, and allows airlines to more effectively manage their travel agent partnerships without the constraints of traditional airline payment and settlement models.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœFor the first time airlines can offer their travel agents a fully integrated payment and settlement tool at the point of sale with consultants no longer having to remember the latest airline deals, the VSP system simply applying these automatically.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœThe solution facilitates credit card and cash settlement capabilities, additional collection and exchange functionality including ADM, ACM and refund processing with dynamic reporting of all their V Australia payment activity at both an individual agency and travel agency group level.Ã¢â¬~

VSP will operate in Australia and New Zealand and will be made available for all IATA and TIDS travel agents. V Australia has partnered with leading GDS providers Amadeus, Galileo and Sabre to deliver the payment solution.