Archive: Issue 1: August/September 2005

E-Ticketing Success Story: Copa Airlines
An exclusive interview with Copa's Mariel Palau, by Chris Staab

Biography of Mariel Palau of Copa

Mariel is Assistant Director of Distribution at Copa Airlines, where her areas of responsibility include e-Commerce, Pricing and Distribution Planning. In her 5 years at Copa, she has

been involved with starting Copa´s e-Commerce strategy, implementing E-TKT at the airline, developing the Distribution Planning Department, as well as with Compliance, Revenue Management and Revenue Analysis. Mariel holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the INCAE.

About Copa Airlines

Based in Panama, Copa is among the newest members of the Skyteam Alliance. It currently serves 32 destinations in 20 countries with the youngest fleet in the Americas of 22 Boeing 737-700 and 800 next generation aircraft. In November 2005, Copa will introduce an additional aircraft type- the Embraer 190. Of note, Copa has consistently been one of the best on time performers in the industry.

When did you implement your first E-TKT at Copa and where did you get information on E-TKT? We issued our first E-TKT in June of 2003 and we decided to do this because we saw a lot of opportunity in having more control and more benefits for our customers. Also, we were able to foresee that the industry was going to move that way. We got our information about E-TKT by doing bench-marking and research.

What challenges did you face implementing E-TKT, and how did you train your staff? Our biggest challenge was making sure that the procedures and security were set in place in order to have control of what was happening. As far as training, some airlines already had it, so it wasn´t something completely new and in a way this made it easier to train our personnel. The training was focused on how it was issued and probable problems that could be encountered and how to solve them, but also we were able to teach them the benefits of it. This was helpful when dealing with customers that were using it for the first time.

Where does Copa stand with E-TKT today? Right now we have E-TKT through all our direct points of sale, GDS and with some of our interline partners. This means that about 80% of our customers use E-TKT. Every year we add E-TKT with partners to have a bigger E-TKT network in order to be ready for the January 1, 2008 deadline.

Has the Latin American customer accepted the E-TKT? Yes, today our passengers want their E-TKT, because they have learned that for them it´s a lot easier to use and buy.

Changing the subject from E-TKT to E-commerce, but on a similar note, does COPA face any issues with Latin American customers fearing to make purchases on the Internet due to security concerns? In Latin America, some people don´t feel comfortable purchasing through the Internet with their credit cards. It is still a concern and we are working to find ways to lower this fear in our customers.

I assume that another challenge that Copa may face in the area of e-Commerce is fraud. How does Copa fight online fraud for purchases made through its copa.com web site? Right now we use address verification for U.S. billing credit cards and for all other credit cards we ask for signature at check-in.

What advice do you have for other airlines about choosing the correct online booking engine for their web sites? This is extremely important, since it is going to be a revenue-generating option. Make sure that if it is outsourced, that the booking engine is adaptable to your needs and that it gives the customers a lot of flexibility on what they can do themselves in their reservations.

Speaking of outsourcing, does Copa outsource its web site? We have about 5 people who deal with different issues of the web site, but we have most of it outsourced.

In closing, does Copa have any plans for self-check-in kiosks? Are there any other future plans at Copa involving e-commerce that you can tell us about? We are looking at check-in kiosks, but since all of our operations are international, there are a lot of issues that we have to look into. Our customers can use Continental´s check-in kiosks if they are flying in one of our codeshare flights that we have with them.

We also have a couple of other projects, but right now I´m unable to comment.

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Christopher Staab

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