South African Airways (SAA) will impose a service fee of up to R500 a ticket for flight bookings not made online.
However, the national carrier says this issue is unrelated to its restructuring bid to return to profitability.
Robyn Chalmers, SAA head of group corporate affairs, says the fee will encourage customers to book their airline tickets online and ease congestion at service centres.
"There are lengthy queues at SAA counters during the busy season, and part of the reason for this is that some people pay for their tickets at the airport service counters."
From August, a service fee of R200 will be imposed for domestic flights and R500 for international flights, she explains. "The fee will also apply to online bookings where customers opt to pay later and collect their tickets at the airport."
SAA has no intention of closing down any of its service counters at the airports or at its city offices, she notes. "We have previously stated SAA will consider retrenchments as a last resort, but we will not do this in an ad hoc fashion."
Most major airlines throughout the world have already migrated to electronic ticketing (e-ticketing), says SAA.
Carla da Silva, SAA acting GM, commercial, says the move to online booking also forms part of the International Air Transport Association's (Iata's) mission to get rid of expensive paper tickets by the end of 2007.
"Iata, the Geneva-based global airlines lobby group, wants all its 243-member airlines, representing 94% of the world's scheduled traffic, to be able to process their passenger tickets electronically."
The association says e-ticketing will reduce the long queues at check-in counters and trim the costs of flying.
Iata director-general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani adds e-ticketing would result in a $3 billion cut in the industry's costs annually, and these savings could be passed on to passengers.
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