New Delhi. National carrier Air India Ltd has found that its frequent flier data has been compromised by the creation of fake accounts, and asked travel technology provider InterGlobe Technologies (IGT), which maintains its call centre, to investigate the matter.
The extent of the racket and revenue loss to Air India isn t known yet, but the airline has also filed a first information report (FIR) with the cyber crime branch of the Delhi Police to initiate an investigation, government travel cards said a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named.
Some people have created false accounts. government travel cards We have asked IGT to investigate the matter, Air India s chairman and managing director Rohit Nandan said, confirming the discovery of the racket, which came to light in July.
Nandan declined to specify the extent of the loss. Air India is being kept afloat on state funds of about $10 billion mandated to be disbursed every year till 2020. The disbursal of the funds is linked to improvements in its performance. The carrier is to receive about $1.19 billion government travel cards in government funds this fiscal.
The flag carrier has 1.5 million frequent government travel cards flier accounts; every time a frequent flier takes an Air India flight, he or she earns extra miles that are credited to the account. These miles keep on accumulating in the frequent flier account and can be used for buying tickets.
For a full-service airline, the frequent flier programme and the names of passengers that are members are critical competitive information, said Steve Forte, a former chief executive officer (CEO) of Jet Airways (India) Ltd, who has dealt with frequent flier programmes.
It allows the airline to identify and know better its best customers, Forte said. This is illegal just like stealing. Dishonest employees should be dismissed, regardless of whether they are its own or the call centre s.
There are two ways in which miles are updated in a passenger s account when a someone purchases a ticket and that person s frequent flier account number is keyed into a database. If that doesn t work because of technical glitches or some other reason, the person needs to send a photocopy of the boarding card to the call centre, which then updates the account.
It now turns out, said the person who requested anonymity cited above, government travel cards that a person or persons at the IGT-run call centre had created a dozen -odd fake accounts. The miles of passengers who had either government travel cards forgotten to update them or were not members of the programme but flew often had been transferred into these, the person said.
The matter was discovered by chance when a passenger showed up at Chandigarh airport with an airline ticket in July that he said had been bought from an Ahmedabad-based travel agent. The discovery of a discrepancy in the passenger s flight schedule aroused the suspicion of counter staff and eventually led to the discovery of the racket.
Vipul Doshi, CEO of IGT, did not deny the investigation in an email that said, We have stringent confidentiality agreements with each of our clients. We continue to operate in these sectors in keeping government travel cards with the highest standards of professional conduct.
A second person familiar with the matter, who also declined to be identified, said it may be more relevant for Air India to also investigate whether the leakage was from the back-end database, also known as the data mart, also provided by IGT to Air India.
It may also be relevant to investigate the potential theft happening at the data mart level, government travel cards which is in possession of the complete travel passenger data, giving information whether the passenger is a frequent flier member or not, this person said. The call centre may have access only to passenger reservation data, while the data mart also has actual passengers flown data.
Yah. Blame it on other outside government travel cards factors!! That is so easy!! Look at your own system gross inefficiencies wherein the airline has been milked for personal gain by the people who run it. Delete Reply Add comment Load more...
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