MANDALA ENTERS INTO COOPERATION WITH PAYPAL

Surabaya, June 9 (ANTARA) - National air carrier Mandala Airlines has entered into cooperation with Paypal to facilitate ticket payment transactions especially for passengers domiciling in foreign countries.

"Under the cooperation scheme, our passengers living abroad will be able to make reservations and pay for their tickets through a website," Mandala Airlines President Director Diono Nurjadin said in a press release made available to Antara here on Tuesday.

He said PayPal was basically an 'online' money transfer service through e-mail or a website. The facility was available to passengers to pay for their tickets.
In addition, he further said, with the facility, it was not necessary for prospective passengers to enter the number of their credit cards and they can pay the tickets through their bank accounts or 'paypal' accounts.

"In the meantime, the source of funds could be their credit cards, bank transfers or electronic checks," he said.
This way of payment was safe from possible fraud. All facilities constituted an easy way to make reservations and pay for tickets under the motto "easy book, easy pay."
At present, he added, the number of passengers paying for their tickets through the website was 50 percent of the total. The make the payments by credit and master cards and the rest by ATM.

Mandala Air is one of the oldest Indonesian airline companies. It has been in existence since 1967 and last year one of its aircraft crashed, causing 147 people to lose their lives. After that Mandala routinely subjected all its aircraft to safety and airworthiness inspections to minimize the possibility of a recurrence of last year's tragedy.

Would-be Mandala passengers, on the day of their departure from Jakarta , Nurjadin said, would go through the following typical experience :
Checking in at Soekarno-Hatta international airport, the Mandala counter employees are surprisingly friendly. In their dark blue uniforms they look distinguished, different from the personnel of low-cost airlines in general. After boarding, one will have a little time to relax before take off. The seats in Mandals's Boeing aircraft are divided in two rows of three, and quite comfortable with more leg room compared to other aircraft.

After complying with the necessary safety instructions, passengers are ready for take off. Once in the air, the cabin crew provides each passenger with a small cardboard box containing a cup of drinking water and three different fairly-tasty cakes. Again service is friendly, the cabin attendants look fresh and in good mood. Flight information is provided on several occasions, and the English version is for a change understandable enough.

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