Your Voice is Heard at IATA Meetings

A significant amount of our advocacy activities center on IATA related issues and initiatives and Members are well represented by the ACTA-appointed Member Travel Agencies of the Agency Programme Joint Council (APJC), a group of equal representation of travel agencies and airlines.

While not all ACTA Members are IATA agencies, many agencies still make air bookings through other distribution channels so consequently, it is essential for ACTA to be at the meeting table with IATA’s Members (airlines) to ensure that the issues of the agency community are heard and recognized in all discussions. 

The Travel Agency Members in this group are all industry leaders who speak on your behalf with authority and credibility based on their extensive experience. They met last week to discuss a long list of possible agenda items for discussion at the upcoming agency-airline meeting to be held at the end of March in Montreal including:

  • BSP commission control functionality,
  • A carrier’s proof of a refund processed through BSPLink,
  • The status of ACTA’s request for IATA to develop a “url hub” to house an airlines’ conditions of carriage and assisting travel agencies in their compliance with the new Air Passenger Protection Regulations,
  • The possibility of accepting dual currencies in BSP,
  • Implementation of 3DS functionality in Canada,
  • NDC and One Order
  • IATA Settlement Systems (ISS) statistics both global and national, and
  • A perspective from IATA on the latest health situation, COVID-19 the recently renamed Coronavirus.

The effectiveness of being heard at IATA meetings is evident with the recent success of our continued pressure and involvement in creating the TIDS-IATA Accreditation Models Comparison Document and our involvement in the 3DS (liability shift) functionality we explained in the January 31 ACTAVision.

ACTA will also be present for the Global agency-airline meeting scheduled for the end of this month at IATA offices in Geneva.

If you have any IATA related concerns, please send them to the attention of Heather Craig-Peddie, Vice President, Advocacy and Member Relations at advocacy@acta.ca.