Fraudulent airline ticket orders rise in last few months
The number of fraudulent airline tickets ordered in the U.S. has surged recently, with more than $1 million in unauthorized tickets issued through travel agents in the last few months.
The Airlines Reporting Corp., the Arlington, Va., company that settles transactions between the nation’s airlines and travel agents, on Monday said it found 82 incidents of unauthorized tickets ordered from August to November.
The face value of the fraudulent tickets in 2011 is more than $1 million, with the largest single incident valued at more than $77,000, according to ARC.
In contrast, the company reported only 18 fraudulent ticket orders in all of 2010. ARC said it didn’t know how many of the fraudulent tickets were used to fly and how many were canceled by the travel agents before they were used.
The company attributes the surge in fraudulent tickets to online scams targeting travel agents. The scammers typically send “phishing emails” to travel agents that appear to have been sent from a global distribution system that provide travel agents the ability to book and issue airline tickets, ARC said. The agents who open the email are asked to log into a fraudulent website and type in their credentials to order tickets.
ARC reported the increase in fraudulent ticket orders to warn travel agents to be on the lookout for such email scams.
“ARC has banded together with other industry leaders to educate agents on how to identify these illegal emails and avoid navigating to fraudulent links,” said Chuck Fischer, the company’s director of operations integrity.
The company handles the financial transactions for all travel agents in the country, including online travel websites, or about 45% of all ticket sales. It does not report on tickets purchased by customers directly from the airlines.
