International Air Transport Association

International Air Transport Association
Formation	April 1945, Havana, Cuba
Headquarters	800 Place Victoria (rue Gauvin), Montreal, Canada
Membership	230 airlines
Key people	Giovanni Bisignani, Director General and CEO
Website	www.iata.org

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is an international industry trade group of airlines headquartered in Montreal, Canada, where the International Civil Aviation Organization is also headquartered.

IATA's mission is to represent, lead, and serve the airline industry. IATA represents some 230 airlines comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic. The Director General and Chief Executive Officer is Giovanni Bisignani. Currently, IATA is present in over 150 countries covered through 101 offices around the globe.

The IATA Head Office are located at 800 Place Victoria (Montreal Stock Exchange Tower) in Montreal since 1977 (having been located at Central Station (Montreal) since its founding) and the executive offices are at the Geneva Airport in Switzerland.

History

IATA was formed on 19 April 1945, in Havana, Cuba. It is the successor to the International Air Traffic Association, founded in The Hague in 1919, the year of the world's first international scheduled services. At its founding, IATA had 57 members from 31 nations, mostly in Europe and North America. Today it has about 230 members from more than 140 nations in every part of the world.

Mission

IATA’s stated mission is to represent, lead and serve the airline industry.All the Airline rules and regulations are defined by IATA.The main aim of IATA is to provide safe and secure transportation to its passengers.

Its stated aims and objectives are as follows:

• to promote safe, regular and economical air transport for the benefit of the people of the world, to foster air commerce and study the problems connected therewith • to promote means for collaboration among air transport enterprises engaged directly or indirectly in international air transport service • to cooperate with ICAO and other international organisations There is always close association and dialogue between ICAO and IATA. We shall now look at the organisation of IATA. Organisation In order to fulfil its aims and objectives IATA is divided into various departments, each with a specific role to fulfil. We shall be looking at the roles of some of these departments. Traffic Department • Provides a forum for traffic coordination discussions • Services as a central source of traffic information for publishers and members • Lists and verifies services of cargo and travel agents worldwide on behalf of the member airlines • Coordinates training programmes for cargo and travel agents • Arranges centralised billing and reporting of agents' sales • Provides a forum for airlines to resolve scheduling problems • Helps represent the industry on airmail issues • Promotes awareness programmes to combat fraud Legal Department • Provides professional legal advise and interpretations to individual members as required from an airline perspective • Distributes and publishes information on legal or regulatory issues of industry-wide interest and importance • Formulates industry positions vis-à-vis bodies like ICAO, the European Community and individual governments

Technical Department • Develops standards to help maximise flight safety, in cooperation with governments, airlines and manufacturers • Advocates airline positions on operational needs • Provides guidance on medical standards for crew, health and hygiene; sets standards for catering and seeks to facilitate travel for all passengers including the handicapped • Assimilates safety statistics and conducts security and safety related seminars • Liaises with governments and international organisations on problems such as drugs smuggling, terrorism, the checking of international documents such as cargo air waybills and passenger ticket fraud

Government and Industry Affairs Department • Lobbies government and international organisations to promote and defend the interests of scheduled airlines • Represents IATA on a regional level and also supports efforts of regional airline organisations on behalf of their member airlines to maintain good working relations with governments • Runs low cost training programmes for staff from developing nations' airlines and related projects • Provides after sales service to new members • Analyses political and economic trends likely to affect airline operations, distributes such information and helps define industry Industry Automotive and Financial Services Department • Operates an industry clearing house handling in excess of USD 25 billion annually • Oversees the functioning of interline agreements designed to offer cargo shipments and passenger convenience • Maintains standard operation criteria and procedures to speed the flow of passengers, baggage and cargo and publishes various types of industry reference material • Assembles, analyses and publishes comparative statistical data for use by airline managements in their planning

Public Relations Department • Represents and defends collective airline interests vis-à-vis the media, consumer groups and the public at large • Serves as a channel for airlines of sizes to benefit from each others' public relations and expertise • Helps market IATA products • Maintains information flow to members

We thus see that various departments of IATA, from their offices at Montréal, Geneva and Singapore do yeomen service not just to the airline industry but also to governments and various related industries. Some of these services are a great help to the Freight Forwarding Industry and other communities. Students too can gain a great deal from IATA's programmes. IATA Cargo and Passenger Agency Programmes Within the Traffic Department there is a specialised section dealing with cargo and travel agency matters. This section is called the IATA Agency Administration Department whose task is to oversee the running of IATA Cargo and Passenger Agency Programmes. Among its diverse functions are: • Listing and certifying service of cargo and travel agents • Coordinating training programmes for cargo and travel agents • Arranging for centralised billing and reporting of cargo and travel agents' sales We shall look at each of these programmes and these functions. The Agency Accreditation Programme Airlines, world over, carry cargo from airport to airport. There are services to be provided before and after carriage. Similarly, airlines need distribution channels beyond their own sales network to sell and market their products worldwide. This need of airlines led to the evolution of the IATA agency. When we discuss about intermediaries we shall look at the details of the functions and working of an IATA agency. The IATA Agency Programme has been steadily built up over a period of almost 60 years. Its main objective is to ensure that all agency outlets used by IATA members are competent business organisations which are capable of providing an accurate and dependable service to the public. It must be noted here that IATA members are airlines. IATA is a voluntary non-political organisation with the world's airlines as its members. An IATA Accredited Cargo Agent also called an IATA Cargo Agent is a freight forwarding agent registered by IATA to act on behalf of IATA appointed member airlines. When looking at the working of an IATA agency we shall get to know how to become one. The IATA Agency Programme also includes commission payments to authorised claimants and the safeguarding of both the airline and the public of practical financial controls. Through a single standard agreement executed with IATA, known as the Cargo Agency Agreement an agent whose approval to represent IATA members is recognised after appropriate appraisal, may hold air waybills and sell transportation on behalf of appointed members. The programme also provides central administration to IATA registered cargo agents. The overall authority for the Cargo Agency Programme lies with the Cargo Agency Conference (CA Conf) which is composed of representatives from IATA member airlines. The CA Conf adopts resolutions directly related to financial, professional and security standards of Cargo Agents.

IATA Training Programmes One important role of IATA is to train airline and agency staff. IATA conducts classroom and distance education programmes in a wide variety of subjects related to air transportation. Details of these programmes are available on IATA's website. The Cargo Agency Settlement System (CASS) CASS is part of IATA’s Cargo Agency Programme run by the Traffic Department. We have already dealt with CASS.

Price setting

One of its core functions is to act as a price setting body for international airfare. In an arrangement going back to 1944, international fare prices have been set through bilateral governmental agreements rather than through market mechanisms. Airlines have been granted a special exemption by each of the main regulatory authorities in the world to consult prices with each other through this body.

Originally both domestic and international aviation were highly regulated by IATA. Since 1978 in US and later in Europe, domestic deregulation highlighted the benefits of open markets to consumers in terms of lower fares and companies in terms of more efficient networks. This led to the formation of bilateral "open skies" agreements that weakened IATA's price fixing role. Negotiations are underway since 2003 to create a completely deregulated aviation market covering European and US airspace. 

In recent years the organisation has been accused of acting as a cartel, and many low cost carriers are not full IATA members. The European Union's competition authorities are currently investigating the IATA. In 2005, Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition, made a proposal to lift the exception to consult prices. In July 2006, the United States Department of Transportation also proposed to withdraw antitrust immunity. IATA teamed with SITA for an electronic ticketing solution.

The effect of the antitrust investigations has been that 'IATA fares' have been withdrawn  -

Within EU at the end of 2006

Between EU-USA and between EU-Australia at the end of June 2007

Between EU and the rest of the world ended the end of October 2007

Australian competition authority ACCC ended immunity in June 2008 for markets to/from Australia

IATA has responded to the demise of the IATA fares by introducing a new fareclass - Flexfares . However, these new fares are not replacement of the earlier full IATA fare, and a number of airlines (including Lufthansa ) are not participating in this.

For fare calculations IATA has divided the world in three regions:

South, Central and North America.

Europe, Middle East and Africa. IATA Europe includes the geographical Europe and Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Other activities

IATA assigns 3-letter IATA Airport Codes and 2-letter IATA airline designators, which are commonly used worldwide. ICAO also assigns airport and airline codes. For Rail&Fly systems, IATA also assigns IATA train station codes. For delay codes, IATA assigns IATA Delay Codes.

IATA is pivotal in the worldwide accreditation of travel agents with exception of the U.S., where this is done by the Airlines Reporting Corporation. Permission to sell airline tickets from the participating carriers is achieved through national member organisations. Over 80% of airlines' sales come from IATA accredited agents.

IATA administrates worldwide the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) and Cargo Accounts Settlement Systems (CASS) that serve as a facilitator of the sales, reporting and remittance of accredited travel and cargo agencies. Both settlement programmes are ruled by standards and resolutions.

IATA regulates the shipping of dangerous goods and publishes the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations manual, a globally accepted field source reference for airlines' shipping of hazardous materials.

IATA coordinates the Scheduling process which governs the allocation and exchange of slots at congested airports worldwide, applying fair, transparent and non-discriminatory principles. In consultation with the airline and airport coordinator communities, IATA manages and publishes the industry standards in the Worldwide Scheduling Guidelines (WSG) intended to provide guidance on managing the allocation of slots at airports.

IATA maintains the Timatic database containing cross border passenger documentation requirements. It is used by airlines to determine whether a passenger can be carried, as well as by airlines and travel agents to provide this information to travellers at the time of booking.

IATA publishes standards for use in the airline industry. The Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) standard defines the 2-Dimensional (2D) bar code printed on paper boarding passes or sent to mobiles phones for electronic boarding passes.

IATA publishes the IATA Rates of Exchange (IROE) four times per year, used with the Neutral Unit of Construction (NUC) fare currency-neutral construction system that superseded the older Fare Construction Unit (FCU) system in 1989.

In 2004, IATA launched Simplifying the Business - a set of five initiatives which it says will save the industry US$6.5 billion every year. These projects are BCBP, IATA e-freight, CUSS (common use self-service), Baggage Improvement Programme (BIP) and the Fast Travel Programme.

In 2003, the IATA Safety Operational Audit (IOSA) was launched with the aim to serve as a standard and worldwide recognized certification of airlines' operational management. The IOSA certification has now become an mandatory requisite for all IATA member airlines.

IATA is member of the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG).

(source:wikipedia)