Air India launches booking through mobile phone

Despite being in an acute financial crisis, national air carrier Air India has been aggressively launching initiatives to strengthen its marketing channels to build bridges with its passengers.

Its latest initiaitve, announced today, tele-booking of Air India ticket through their mobile phone by using a one-time downloadable Ngpay software.

Ngpay is a service provider for booking Air India domestic seats through mobile technology. Payments can made by credit and debit cards, and net-banking through mobile phone itself.

according to Air India this facility was primarily aimed at helping passengers from tier-II and tier-III cities where internet facility may not be readily accessible as well as for busy business travellers who can now make bookings, in between meetings, while travelling, or the tech savvy who are comfortable with ecommerce technology.

For the layman, it is essentially like going to an Air India booking counter through their mobile phones and purchasing an Air India ticket.  The passenger needs only to sms 'ngpay' to 56767 and download the free Ngpay software from ngpay.com on a GPRS-enabled handset.

The software which take up between 65 to 80 kb space, depending on the model of the instrument, can also be searched for in all leading app stores like Android marketplace,  Blackberry app world, Getjar, Ovi store, etc.