ATB2 Test
Passenger Ticket and Baggage Check
This
ticket is an early production ticket used for testing.
The holes in it are inserted by the Audit department
to ensure that no one used it after testing.
This ATB coupon has is SCN 123 with
a check digit of 4, so it’s a very early one.
This is
an ATB2
(Automated Ticket Boarding Pass 2) this was a lower cost solution
for the
high cost of ticketing.
ATB2s were popular in Europe, ATBs
(sometimes
called ATB1s, were popular in the US). ATB1s did not use a
magnetic stripe.
The
tickets before ATB where
TAT (Transitional Automated Tickets)
or an OPTAT (Off Premises
Transitional Automated Tickets i.e. A travel agent).
The tickets typically (IATA
resolution) consisted of
1)
Cover with Logo and conditions of carriage (at the front or back of the
ticket)
2)
Audit Coupon
3)
Issuing Office Coupon
4)
Flight Coupon 1
5)
Flight Coupon 2
6)
Flight Coupon 3
7)
Flight Coupon 4
8)
Passenger Coupon
In
some cases, Carriers such as Australian Airlines produced a ticket with
only 2 flight
coupons since research showed the average
use of coupons per passenger was only 1.7. Saving on
average 2 coupons per ticket provided significant cost
reductions.
All the coupons were different
colours except for the flight coupons which had “stippled” sections
so that the flight for which the
coupon was valid stood out.
Carbonless paper was used.
These tickets were costly to produce.
Each coupon had to be produced separately and then combined
into a single ticket.
All coupons within that ticket had to have the same ticket number.
ATBs were not “pre-assembled”
and had the advantage of providing as many or as few flight coupons as
required.
Therefore if you were flying
a single segment only 1 ABT2 was issued, if you were flying 6 segments,
six ATBs were used.
With TAT tickets the same
journeys would result in 3 coupons being “wasted” in the first instance
and 2 in the second.
Also, using an ATB printer
with 2 feeds, a ticked could be produced by combining the ATB coupons
(for flight segments) with much cheaper
“blank cardboard cards” for the
issuing office, audit and passenger coupons.
To achieve this flexibility the
“ticket number” was only assigned to the ATB once it was printed for a
passenger.
However, the ATB was
“accountable stock” and therefore like a blank cheque.
A unique SCN (Stock Control Number)
was used to track each ticket.
The ATB coupon in the collection
has is SCN 123 with a check digit of 4, so the ticket in the collection
it’s a very early one.
Once the passenger arrived at the
airport, ATB2s gave the airline the option of not issuing a “separate”
boarding pass,
by using the ATB itself as the
boarding pass, thus saving money on a boarding pass.
The magnetic stripe also enabled
the airline (if it wished to) to read all the details of the ticket and
electronically
send this data to their accounting
system.
In 1993/1994 (either during or
around the Qantas takeover of Australian Airlines, Australian decided
that ATB2s might be a cost
effective method for “Mail
Ticket”.
Issuing tickets by mail was popular
with the airlines since it reduced traffic at the airport
(many passengers in those
days picked up their tickets at the airport ticket counter).
Besides the cost reduction with the
ATB2, Australian also saw reductions in the cost of labour.
The old method involved printing a
ticket and printing an address from the PNR (Passenger Name Record) and
then matching
up the 2 to send to the
passenger. With the ATB2 it was possible to do this in one
transaction, printing the address on a blank
(non ATB) coupon which appeared at the very front of the
ticket.
The completed ticket was then
placed in a “window” envelope mailed.
The software required to change a
TAT “image” (produced by the Unisys Mainframe) to an “ATB” image and to
populate
the data in the magnetic
stripe was developed by Unisys.
The ATB2 coupons were produced by
John Sands.
The production operation only
lasted about 3 months after which Qantas ended it.
It is believed that no other
airline in Australia used ATB2 and since the production trials were
very short.
Production Notes: Produced by John
Sands Pty Ltd
Acquisition Date: 2008
Production Date: Nil
Height: 82 mm
Width: 203 mm
Kindly Donated by P Ramadge Vic.
