ATAB in association with the International Airlines Transport Association (IATA) launched the system where so far 10 airlines including Bangladesh Biman and 15 travel agents have joined.

State Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir formally inaugurated the billing settlement plan at a travel agent office in Dhaka.

Mahmoodur Rahman, managing director of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, and MA Muhaimin Saleh, president of Atab, also spoke.

Fakhrul Islam said the aviation sector needs discipline and modernization to cope with the changing world scenario.

Biman Managing Director Mahmoodur Rahman said Biman will introduce e-ticketing system by September 2007.

The billing settlement plan will ease the reporting of ticket sales and settlement for participating travel agents and airlines.

Earlier, agents had to interact directly with each of the respective airline for the settlement process, which is both costly and time consuming.

With the start of the plan, airlines and travel agents now receive only one sales report. Travel agents will need to make one payment to the airlines via the plan by a pre-determined date. Airlines will then receive their payments from the billing settlement plan.

A total of 340 million tickets were processed through IATA's billing settlement plan worldwide with the total value of settlement topping US$158 billion in 2004.