Rosaviatsia (the Federal Air Transport Agency) is proposing to introduce regulatory requirements for airlines to transition to domestic booking systems, said agency head Alexander Neradko, according to Interfax.
“A high-quality domestic system must emerge, we must "Offer this range of services to airlines, and then introduce regulatory requirements—but only with a delayed implementation date. That is, not immediately, but with a transition period," he told reporters on the sidelines of the RUBAE business aviation exhibition.
According to him, such a system is already in operation at Sheremetyevo Airport, and developments are also underway “under the auspices of Rostec.”
"This needs to be done—we need to embrace import substitution, including in booking and reservations. Otherwise, the slightest glitch in these systems, whose servers are located abroad, could lead to disruption at major airports," noted A. Neradko.
Earlier in August, the head of the Federal Air Transport Agency held a meeting during which he called for an accelerated transition of airlines to domestic booking systems. As the agency noted, Russian air carriers currently use several major booking and sales systems, four of which are foreign: Spain's Amadeus, the US-based Sabre and Galileo, and Switzerland's Gabriel SITA. The largest Russian booking system is Sirena-Travel.
Last year, Amadeus came under fire from Igor Artemyev, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the official stated that the system was setting airfare prices in a way that raised suspicions of a violation of competition in this market. Putin then ordered an investigation. Experts noted, however, that the problems with airfare pricing were not rooted in the booking systems—Russian airlines set fares using the same principles as carriers worldwide, using dynamic pricing.
Source: trn-news.ru