Nesma Airlines (NE/477) will join ARC as a participating airline effective August 19, 2024 (PED 08/25/24).
Nesma Airlines, headquartered in Cairo, is a full-service Egyptian airline that launched scheduled service in 2010. It provides scheduled passenger service and charter flights to a variety of destinations across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The airline now offers flights to eight domestic and 10 international destinations, including Italy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Nesma Airlines operates three A320 aircraft and handles around 380,000 passengers annually, averaging 900 daily.
Nesma Airlines has elected the General Concurrence method of agent appointment, whereby all ARC agents are automatically appointed as Nesma agents. The airline participates in Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport GDSs and currently accepts cash only as a valid form of payment.
For inquiries and ARC ticketing information, please contact Nesma Airlines by emailing nesmaairlines@groupsystemsamerica.com or calling 855-564-3044.
Please be aware that fraudsters are targeting Amadeus login credentials through phishing emails. See the example below.
GDS providers will never ask agents to log into their system through an email link.
Always log into your GDS through bookmarks in your browser, not through an email link.
Visit the fraud prevention page for more information on unauthorized ticketing and additional fraud schemes targeting the agency community. Please view our Cybersecurity Guide and on-demand webinars for additional resources.
ARC’s revenue integrity team is here to provide fraud-related support. If you suspect you have been a victim of fraud, contact ARC immediately by calling 855-358-0393 or emailing stopfraud@arccorp.com. We also offer after-hours and weekend support.
Scheduled My ARC System Maintenance on Sunday, August 25
My ARC will be unavailable on Sunday, August 25, from 1 to 7 a.m. ET. During this scheduled time, you will be unable to access My ARC or any of its tools, including IAR and Memo Manager. This system outage is necessary to perform required system upgrades and maintenance.
ARC realizes any system outage is an inconvenience, and we apologize for any impact this may have on your work with ARC tools and products. This advance notice is intended to provide you with adequate time to make any necessary schedule adjustments. To help minimize the impact on you, early Sunday mornings are selected for maintenance because this time has the lowest level of user activity.
We appreciate your understanding and patience as we improve and upgrade ARC systems. Please share this information with others in your organization who may be impacted by these scheduled outages. You can subscribe to receive notifications whenever any ARC system encounters an unexpected incident or is scheduled for maintenance through the ARC Status Dashboard located in My ARC.
On August 26, ARC will change the formula for calculating financial instrument amounts, following the approved changes by JAB-ARA and the ARC Board.
The reason for the changes is twofold:
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ARC’s agency financial instrument amount and calculation method have not been adjusted in many years.
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The agent risk landscape has evolved due to changes in business models and increased cash sales. To better align with these changes, ARC is modernizing and adjusting the financial instrument for agents.
The following outlines the changes to the financial instrument requirement:
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The maximum amount requirement will increase from $70,000 to $150,000.
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The calculation will adjust from an agent's average net cash sales to an agent's average gross cash sales based on a 12-month cycle.
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Foreign-owned entities must provide ARC with a $150,00 financial instrument.
Adopting these changes allows ARC to simplify the calculation, promote greater transparency and facilitate the agency's calculations. The above-noted changes can be referenced in Section 30 of the ARA and Section D of the IAH.
Effective August 26, these changes will be applied to your agency on your upcoming anniversary date.
As our industry continues to work together to provide travelers with improved retailing experiences, it becomes increasingly important for agencies and airlines to have accurate and timely transaction data for customer service purposes as well as revenue and financial forecasting. To enable these improvements, beginning in 2025, ARC plans to expedite the output of settled transaction data by several hours following the close of the weekly reporting period.
Why is this process update important?
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Faster Customer Refunds. The change will accelerate customer refunds/exchanges issued on Mondays and Sundays by one day.
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Quicker Access to Settled Sales Data. Both travel agencies and airlines will have faster access to sales data to better project revenues and cash flow. The timeliness of agency sales data availability to airlines currently lags the airline-direct channel. The acceleration of settled data reduces this gap, helping to ensure the agency channel remains competitive with airlines’ own channels.
How does this impact you? Effective January 13, 2025, ARC will require travel agencies to authorize their weekly sales reports by 1:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) (excluding Monday and Tuesday holiday weeks). This is a change from the current authorization deadline of 11:59:59 p.m. ET.
While more than 85% of ARC reports are already routinely authorized before the new deadline of 1:59:59 p.m. ET, we understand that for some agencies this change will require updates to internal processes and/or staff scheduling. This is why we are giving ample notice of this change. Ensuring your agency has time to prepare should this change in schedule impact your operations will make for a successful transition.
To prepare for this change, ARC recommends travel agencies that have not already done so begin reconciling sales reports daily. Daily reconciling will reduce the time commitment to clear errors at the end of the weekly reporting period. For exchange transactions, it is important to ensure any residual value MCO/EMD is correctly linked to the primary exchange, so the transaction is accurately balanced before settlement. Additional best practices can be found on arccorp.com.
Thank you in advance for your focus on this very important process change. If you have questions or require additional assistance, please contact our Customer Care team at 1-855-816-8003 or ccchelp@arccorp.com. They’ll be listening for ways we can further prepare you.
ARC is making updates to the ARA and CTDRA that will take effect on August 26, 2024. View a summary of the updates and a full review of the changes coming to the ARA and CTDRA using the links below.
Changes to ARA:
Changes to CTDRA:
Please note, in accordance with Section 5 of the ARA, your continued participation with ARC after August 26, 2024, serves as your acceptance of the amendments.
ARC strongly recommends reconciling IAR sales reports daily. A final reconciliation should also be performed before sales report authorization/submission. The final net remittance of the report is the amount ARC will draft to or from your bank account.
The following daily IAR sales report checks will:
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Verify that all documents and voids are correctly listed.
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Verify that all transactions were legitimately issued by your agency (to guard against unauthorized ticketing).
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Correct any errors.
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Verify all commission amounts.
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Verify that all refund transactions are accurate and that their values include any penalty information or waiver code (if applicable).
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Verify that all exchange transactions are accurate and that their values include any penalty information or waiver code (if applicable).
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Verify that all residual value MCOs/EMDs are properly linked to their associated exchange transaction as companion exchanges.
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Verify that all other companion exchanges (exchanges that involve more than one new document) have all additional new documents correctly linked.
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Verify any GDS void of a companion exchange transaction has been processed in IAR. IAR rejects void requests of either document once linked into a companion exchange transaction. The void of either document is only allowed when the companion link is manually broken by removing/unhooking the second new document from the transaction within the next business day after issuance.
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Verify all IAR modifications and voids are completed prior to the expiration of the transaction’s next business day window date.
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Verify cash and credit totals.
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Verify the net remit amount.