Qantas now offers interline e-ticketing with all oneworld partners

Qantas now offers interline e-ticketing (IET) with all other members of the oneworld^TM  alliance.

Cathay Pacific was the final carrier in the alliance to link up with the Australian airline. For the Hong Kong-based partner, it was its second oneworld IET link-up in days, following its cut-over with Finnair.

Interline e-ticketing is now in place between 20 of the potential 28 pairs of oneworld partners, keeping the grouping firmly on track to be the first of the global alliances with IET between all of its member airlines,scheduled for early in the New Year.

Already, more than 90 per cent of passengers transferring between oneworld carriers can do so with the convenience of just one electronic ticket. 

This makes connections between airlines smoother, easier and more reliable, and reduces the time and hassle involved in rebooking from one carrier to another, should that be needed for any reason.

The customer benefits of e-tickets themselves are also numerous - they cannot be lost or stolen, they make check-in quicker and smoother, helping eliminate queues at airports by giving customers access to the speed and convenience of new automation features.

With IATA estimating that electronic tickets savec around US$8 for each paper ticket eliminated, e-tickets and interline e-ticketing also provide millions of dollars a year in savings for the airlines.

Of Qantas' completion of its oneworld IET links, the airline's Head of Sales and Distribution Rob Gurney said: "This is an important achievement for Qantas and for the oneworld alliance."

American Airlines was in June the first carrier to offer the IET with all the other oneworld carriers - making it the first airline in the world to link up in this way with all its global alliance partners. British Airways completed its oneworld IET links in October.

The chart below indicates which pairs of oneworld carriers now offer IET, and when it was implemented between them.

Key: AA: American Airlines AY: Finnair BA: British Airways CX: Cathay Pacific EI: Aer Lingus IB: Iberia LA: LAN QF: Qantas

About oneworld: oneworld brings together some of the best and biggest names in the airline business, enabling them to offer their customers more services and benefits than any airline can provide on its own. These include a broader route network, opportunities to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles and points across the combined oneworld network and more airport lounges. Together, its members serve almost 600 destinations in 135 countries. oneworld was voted the world's best airline alliance by readers of Business Traveller magazine in its 2004 poll and was last week named the World's Leading Airline Alliance for the second year running in the World Travel Awards, based on votes cast by travel professionals from 80,000 agencies in more than 200 countries.