Bargain Breaks

IATA (International Air Transport Association)

It is an organization established in 1945 and headquartered in Geneva. The objectives of this organization are as follows:

To ensure safe, regular and economical air transport for the benefit of the people world wide
To provide a common platform for travel agencies and tour operators to prevent economical waste caused by unreasonable competition.
To encourage the art of aircraft design and operation for peaceful purposes.
To provide training and educational facilities for its members.

Its contributions are as under:

IATA provides a common platform to solve many travel trade problems.
IATA helps the travel agencies and tour operators to establish their professionalism
IATA helps its members to establish integrity in the field of tourism
It simplifies the travel process.
It helps the promotion and development of tourism.
Helps in the improvement of tourist plans and service facilities.
To provide timely update and reliable information to its members to promote ethical practices.
To protect the interest of travel companies worldwide.

There are 2 types of membership in this organization. They are:

Active members and
Associate members.

Active members are all the scheduled airlines of the countries and associate members are hoteliers, transport companies etc. Moreover through the educational facility provided for the interested. Many employment opportunities in the field of travel, tourism and hotel are created. IATA qualified personnel are required to do international ticketing which creates enthusiasm in the minds of the people. Moreover these employees are paid high and also they have very vast future perspective.

In the late 90’s accounts on ticketing were all handled personally but now with the technical development in the use of computers, all such works were made easy. Besides the computer reservation systems, collects data in different ways from different places of the world.

In addition to this IATA has given two – letter codes for several airlines for easiness, say for e.g. AF for Air France. Some of the airlines and their two – letter codes are discussed below:

Aa - American Airlines
Sa - South Africa -Lufthansa
Az - Alitalia
Nh - Nppon Airlines,
Dl - Delta Airways.
JL - Japanese Airlines.
Qa -Quantas
Mh –Malaysian airlines.
Tg - Thai airways.