ASTA today commended the Airlines Reporting Corp. (ARC) for dropping its plan to reduce the airline ticket void window from two days to the day of ticketing.
Alexandria, VA- „This is clearly a victory for all ARC accredited agents. We are excited that ARC has heard the concerns of the agency community regarding the impact of same-day reporting on their businesses,“ said ASTA President and Chair Chris Russo. „We are especially grateful to ARC’s CEO, David Collins, for attending ASTA’s Premium Summit on February 5 and engaging in an open and honest dialogue with members. Same day voiding, if implemented, would have not only created operational challenges for agents, but would have also created competitive challenges with airline-direct channels that allow customers to refund tickets within 24 hours of a booking.“
In a press release sent out by ARC earlier today, the company announced other measures that will be implemented this summer and that „will improve the timeframe for data availability by 36 percent or a full day improvement for most daily sales cycles.“ It went on to say that following a „thorough examination of the issues and opportunities [it] concluded that a major improvement to data availability could be made without requiring so-called ‘same-day voiding‘.“
When it earlier appeared that same-day voiding was to become a reality, ASTA prepared for its members a white paper outlining some of the business issues associated with this change and encouraged members to share their concerns with same day voiding in the Agency Operations bulletin board at ASTA.org.