Arik Air, West Africa’s largest commercial airline, in cooperation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has joined the Billing Settlement Plan (BSP) for Nigeria and Ghana. BSP facilitates access to all IATA accredited agents to sell Arik Air’s tickets through their outlets.

Apart from normal ticketing, passengers can buy other facilities and services of Arik Air which include upgrade to a higher class, excess baggage tickets, airport lounge facility through any IATA accredited travel agents.

Arik Air’s Senior Vice President Commercial, Mr. Kevin Steele said: “We are committed to delivering the best available facilities and services to our customers in a quick and effective way; through BSP we are coming closer to the passenger community.”

The airline’s Vice President Sales and Distribution, Mr. John Brayford elaborated: “With this new system more than 500 travel agents will be able to sell Arik Air’s products and services through their outlets in Nigeria while agents selling Arik Air’s tickets in Ghana will increase to 85 from the current single digit”.

“We are delighted to become a member of BSP and hope to build strong business relationships with our travel agency colleagues and their customers in the future. This is just one of several initiatives we will roll out during 2011 designed to improve service to our customers”

BSP is a system designed to facilitate and simplify the selling, reporting and remitting procedures of IATA Accredited Passenger Sales Agents, as well as improve financial control and cash flow for BSP Airlines.

Arik Air was founded in 2006 and started commercial operations on October 30, 2006 between Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt with three brand new Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft becoming the first CRJ900 operator on the African continent and the first airline to introduce new commercial aircraft into Nigeria in over 20 years.

Arik Air is Nigeria’s leading commercial airline. It now operates a fleet of 26 state-of-the art regional, medium haul and long haul aircraft including two Airbus A340-500 making the airline the first operator of the wide bodied aircraft in Africa.

The airline currently serves 30 airports across Nigeria as well as Accra (Ghana), Banjul (Gambia), Cotonou (Benin), Dakar (Senegal), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Monrovia (Liberia), London Heathrow (UK), Johannesburg (South Africa) and New York JFK (USA).

The airline operates a combined number of over 150 daily flights from its hubs in Lagos and Abuja.