A 2011 vigilance report, which had exposed certain discrepancies in Air India’s ticket sales, will be reviewed to further probe allegations of wrong-doing in awarding a contract for managing the flag carrier’s ticketing call centres to Gurgaon-based InterGlobe Enterprises (IGE) which runs the low-cost carrier IndiGo, an airline official said.
“A vigilance report in 2011 had pointed out that there were discrepancies in our reservation system. We use a system call dialer ticket which is managed by the call centres awarded to IGE. It was found out that rather than tickets being issued from the dialer system, they were issued by IGE instead and due to this, we had to pay them commission for selling the tickets,” a senior Air India official told IANS.
“They were only supposed to have maintained and managed the dialler ticketing call centre systems. The report stated that they gained by selling tickets on their own name rather than going through the system that was put in place.”
The report under review had corroborated its finding from the data gathered from International Air Transport Association billing and settlement plan (BSP) office which takes care of all the remittance and commissions to the ticket general sales agents (GSAs) who sell air tickets in bulk.
“There were allegations that they (IGE) earned by maintaining our systems and selling the tickets in their own name. If the tickets were sold through the dialler system, we would not have paid any commission to them.”
The dialler system is an easy phone booking mechanism through which passengers can reserve a ticket that is automatically sent to their email address.
The vigilance report also mentioned likely collusion of some Air India officials with the call centre division. The officials against whom the allegations of mismanagement were levied have thereafter left the company, said the official.
The current probe which is ordered by the ministry to ascertain any wrong doing by IGE of taking away market share or any revenue loss to Air India as the national carrier was relegated to fourth position in terms of market share in April which stood at 17.9 percent.
“How come InterGlobe, the company which runs IndiGo, handles Air India’s ticket reservation call centres? This is a blatant disregard for corporate rules. There is no certainty that anything was going wrong, but to make sure that no doubts remain, the probe was ordered,” a senior civil aviation ministry official had said Friday.
According to the official, tenders were issued by Air India in 2010 and the lowest bidder was InterGlobe, which replaced Stracon.
The official also said changes in the information technology system will be made to replace the old manual system, which is prone to manipulations.
“Some changes have been made already and some more will be implemented.”
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