What is a Validating / Plating Carrier?

We mostly use online travel companies or travel agents to book our tickets but we are not always directly paying the airline we are traveling with. Rather, most of the time when traveling using multiple flights our validating carrier is going to distribute the payment to those airlines on your behalf.

A validating carrier, also known as ticket issuing carrier or plating carrier is the airline responsible for issuing your ticket. That particular airline is also responsible for holding your money until you safely take off.

Now here is the thing, the plane you are flying in might not necessarily be your validating carrier airline. This happens when you choose multiple flights. When choosing multiple airlines on a single trip, one particular validating carrier is selected. You pay that carrier and the carrier reimburses all the other airlines you will be using once you are on your flight.

This is done to ensure secure distribution of the payments. It also fastens the entire payment procedure and saves time of the customer as well.

What Exactly Is Ticketing Carrier / Validating Carrier / Plating Carrier?

A lot of people mix these carriers with other carriers like marketing carriers and operating carrier. The marketing carrier is the one that markets the flight to you and has its name on the itinerary. Whereas the operating carrier is the one that is responsible for operating the flight.

But these carriers are strictly related to the payment and booking of flight tickets and more or less mean the same thing. Let’s dive into some further details.

The term “Ticketing Carrier” refers to a carrier that issues the ticket. This is solely responsible for collecting your given payment and then distributing to the airlines with which you are actually travelling. This happens once you safely take off.

There is another term used for this which is “Validating Carrier”. This is because this carrier aside from the payment procedure is also responsible for validating whether the itinerary is properly paid for. We will also be discussing how exactly does it validate it.

And lastly, the final term used for this word is the “Plating Carrier”. Unlike the other terms which indicate some sort of activity, this one has a little back story. A few years back when we only used paper tickets, a big rugged metal plate was used to stamp the code number and airline’s number on those carbon paper tickets and referring to that plate the expression somehow became “Plating Carrier”.

Now, remember there might be a few different marketing and operating carriers but there will only be one ticketing carrier for the issued ticket.

How To Check Your Validating Carrier

In this modern age, we use the internet for most of our activities. Like internet banking and ordering food online, we also buy our air tickets online. If you cut your tickets online then you will have an E-ticket and that tells you about your ticketing carrier.

Generally, E-tickets are quite hard to read with all the airline lingo on it. But check for the first three digits of the E-ticket after the booking is complete and match with the available airlines. Airline under the Airline Reporting Corporation or the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan have their own unique digits.

For instance, 016 is the digits for United Airlines and 001 is for American Airlines. In some other cases, you might be lucky to have the validating carrier name at the top right side of the ticket.

In general, if you book your flights through an online travel company or a travel agent you are likely not going to know about your ticketing carrier unless of course, you ask them. It’s always best if you ask your travel agent about the carrier issuing your flights.

How is The Ticketing Carrier Selected

The carriers responsible for issuing the tickets are mostly selected by your travel agents. The travel agents select the carriers on the basis of the commission offered to them. Different plating carriers offer different commissions and benefits and this might not always meet the best interest of the customers.

Depending on that benefit or commission the travel agents or agencies select their desirable carriers. This sometimes does not suit the customer’s best interest because the airline might be having financial troubles at the time of issuing.

This puts the customer at risk of not getting a proper refund or alternative options of choosing a different carrier if anything goes wrong.

How Does A Traveling Agent Issue A Ticket

Whenever your travel agent books a ticket, it has to be validated by the carrier, hence the name validating carrier. The entire ticketing process goes through a few checkpoints. In order for a travel agent to issue a particular ticket, it has to go through the following validation points:

• The proposed ticketing carriers participate in the settlement plan of the ticket issued. The plans are similar to the ones like BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) or ARC (Airline Reporting Corporation).

• The ticketing carrier fulfils all the itinerary segments and interlining agreements by allowing the ticket to be issued by all the operating carriers and the marketing carriers.

• The agency responsible for issuing the ticket has proper authority to issue on behalf of the carrier.

Benefits Of Knowing About The Validating Carrier

This is one of the most common questions regarding the carriers. We previously mentioned a little about the fact that the carrier your travel agent will choose for you might not always be for your best interest.

It is very important to know who exactly is your ticketing carrier, especially considering the current economic situation. All of the available airlines may not be economically solvent. You might be wondering whether this directly affects you or not.

Truth be told, the answer would be yes. Yes, it will affect you if the airline is not solvent. Suppose you need to get a refund from that airline but it goes bankrupt at that particular time. And being bankrupt the company will be completely unable to give you that refund even if it had some sort of policy.

But there is another thing to consider. Every carrier is in contact with some other carrier. When asking for refunds specific carrier might give you credits which you can only use on some specified carriers that are in contact with the initial ticketing carrier.

This greatly limits your options for travelling considering the amount of refund credit.

For your best interest, it is generally a good idea to know about your validating carrier at the time of booking the flight and you can do that simply by asking your travel agent or the agency company.

For instance, if a particular plating carrier company is in some sort of financial problem and you are booking a flight with them well in advance. Then it’s best to be aware of their conditions and ask your travel agent or agency to look for a different ticketing carrier.

Different carriers have different policies about refunds. Make sure you and the carrier you are going to be aligned with are on the same page. A lot of carriers are also interconnected. It’s probably a good idea to know which carriers your initial ticketing carrier is connected with.

Your validating carrier has limitations regarding the alternative carriers so it is best to know about the available options. This also gives you a chance to compare with other validating carriers and choose the best option and this is the benefit you can get by learning about your carrier.

Just like the previous case, you will again have to consult with your travel agents to know about this information.

Takeaway

Validating Carriers enable the smooth and secure distribution of the payments. It also eases a lot of hassles on the customer’s behalf. In case of multi-leg flights, it gets hard to keep proper track of the money and it is easier for one platform to control the distribution of the money. In this case, your ticketing carrier does the job for you.

But you also have to be aware of which plating carrier is actually being selected by your travel agency. It’s always best to do a little background check about the solvency, refund policy, and the available carriers to make sure you get the best flight for money and don’t have to worry about any inconveniences.