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New Personal Information Requirements for Airline Tickets
by Rebecca Bliefernich on July 02, 2010 |
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The Secure Flight and TSA requirements discussion is heating up. All reservations after 01Nov2010 must have the required information in it. Every airline ticket issued in the USA must have birth date, sex and full name in the reservation record. If it's an international flight the passport number and expiration date are required too. These records are submitted to TSA 72 hours prior to the flight time. If the information is missing TSA will shoot it back to the airlines as non-compliant. As of today, the airlines are deciding what to do with these records. One solution - airlines will CANCEL the reservation!
It's a fairly new procedure - at our agency we have been meeting this requirement for our clients since last Fall when the regulation started. Airlines have been adjusting their websites and booking engines to ensure passengers enter what's required at the time of buying the ticket. But the deadline is approaching and everyone is talking about what to do with the non-compliant reservations that get kicked back to the airlines.
Here's a section of the discussion from one of our industry newsletters, ASTA’s Industry Affairs Department:
"Effective Nov 1, the airlines are not only at risk of facing government enforcement action if they transmit non-compliant PNRs, they are also at risk of facing overburdened airport check-in counters. To prevent this from occurring, some airlines are now announcing agency enforcement policies to ensure PNRs from the agency channel are Secure Flight compliant. US Airways, for example, has indicated that the only way it can be certain to avoid enforcement action is to “purge any non-compliance records from their system.” While these enforcement threats may differ by airline, the bottom line is that providing Secure Flight data is required by law.
As it stands today, the airlines collect Secure Flight data at the time-of-booking. The agency channel has the flexibility to collect Secure Flight data at any point during the reservation process as long as the data elements are added to the PNR prior to 72 hours of travel. This flexibility comes at a risk, as the burden of following-up with the customer and updating the PNR is on the travel agent. In the coming weeks, ASTA will be meeting with ARC, TSA and the GDSs to help the industry develop solutions to manage the collection of Secure Flight data in a way that minimizes enforcement action by TSA and/or the airlines as the Nov 1 deadline approaches."
If you have a ticket or a vacation booked and don't remember giving this information then get on the phone and talk to the airline, the agency, or tour operator. That ounce of prevention will make you sleep easier at night!
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