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CIT Harmonized delay confirmation
At the 26th meeting of the CIV Committee in Utrecht on 24 September this year, the CIT's harmonised delay confirmation was approved for adoption in the Manual for International Rail Tickets (MIRT) as a as a sector standard for delay confirmation.
At the High-Level Passenger Meeting in Prague in February 2022, the European passenger rail CEOs from CER and UIC committed to further improve the passenger experience based on the CER Ticketing Roadmap. The CER Ticketing Roadmap under Action point 8 contains a requirement for “better support during disruptions and delays” and therefore mentions the CIT product “Agreement on Journey Continuation” (AJC) as solution that may be used to enhance the passenger’s journey.
One of the important points in this respect is the possibility to harmonise the delay/cancellation confirmations that are issued by railway undertakings (RU) to passengers to allow them to continue the journey – in accordance with the AJC – after a train is delayed or cancelled. Currently, every RU uses a different delay/cancellation confirmation model.
During 2023, CIT collected examples of the delay confirmations used by CIT members and prepared analyses with a proposal on the harmonisation of this document. The survey showed variability and diversity of the nature, layout and content of delay confirmations and railways’ tendency to stick to pragmatic approaches, i.e. to link the delay confirmation with other functional features, e.g. endorsements to the tickets to validate them for another route, train or extension of the tickets’ validity.
CIT’s harmonised delay confirmation was developed based on the outcomes of the survey and current practice as mirrored in the delay confirmation collection. The legal (CIV, rail PRR) and sector standard requirements (Manual for International Rail Tickets) were taken into consideration. In a first step this delay confirmation was included in the AJC (already by December 2023) as a document which may be used.
In a second step, although the uniform delay confirmation cannot be made mandatory, at the 26th meeting of the CIV Committee in Utrecht on 24 September this year, the CIT's harmonised delay confirmation was approved for adoption as a sector standard in the Manual for International Rail Tickets (MIRT) from 15 December 2024. The document can therefore be used not only in the context of the AJC, but generally as a sector-wide solution for delay confirmation.
The promising project has borne its first fruit: NS (the Dutch railways) has already introduced this new delay confirmation for the benefit of passengers and railway staff.
Based on a consolidated and unified CIT delay confirmation, CIT in cooperation with UIC is already working on the digitalisation of this product; we will inform you about this process during future editions of CIT-News.