Air Deccan

crvlvr

The difference is that internet transactions are considered "card not present" transactions. Which are inherently high risk as their is not evidence that the customer has physical possession of the card. Also, when you purchase goods online, there is a mailing address to which the goods are shipped which can be used to investigate fraud (most e-tailers won't ship to mail/post boxes) With internet purchase of air travel, the card holder is not present during purchase, so the onlt way the airline can verify that the transaction was not fraudulent is to determine that the traveller is the card holder. Unfortunately since there are no govt issued ID cards (or its not mandatory to have them) it becomes impossible fo the airline to determine if the card holder is traveling.

However, in the US, the traveller is required to produce the credit card at the counter. The airlines in India could adopt this policy instead.

akt

Unlike most merchandize that is either picked up in the store shipped within days, travel is almost unique. I pay now but may not fly for weeks or months. Typical credit card billing cycle being one month, it should at the very least be safe to sell tickets for travel more than a month later. Extra precautions should only be needed when the flight is less than a month away.

crvlvr

The Fair Credit Billing Act (US) allows the customer 60 days after receipt of the statement to dispute a chage. Potentially 3 months could pass before the Airline receives and has to research a dispute. Or, in other words, credit cards purchases should be made atleast 3 months in advance.

akt

I suspect that most people, once they see a fraudulent charge on their bill, would act much faster than wait 60 days. Systems have to consider average scenarios, not absolute worst cases. In other words, we should be cautious, not paranoid.

I'd thus be comfortable letting anyone buy any ticket for travel later than 4-6 weeks. If the travel is to be sooner than this, then the card owner must be part of the traveling party (which would automatically require him to show identification at boarding time). Anything more is just the bureaucratic instinct to inconvenience people.