IATA to cease using paper tivkets

[cabco]

Reuters

Paper airline tickets to end in 2008

The global airlines body IATA has placed its last order for paper tickets, clearing the way for air travel to be based entirely on electronic ticketing from June 1 next year.
"In just 278 more days, the paper ticket will become a collector's item," International Air Transport Association (IATA) director-general Giovanni Bisignani said.

The changeover from paper would not only cut airlines' costs by $US9 ($A11) for every traveller but would also mean the industry - criticised by environmentalists for its part in global warming - would save 50,000 mature trees a year, he added.

Bisignani did not say whether the $US9 ($A11) in cost savings would or should be passed on to passengers. Based in Geneva, IATA represents more than 240 airlines which operate 94 per cent of scheduled international flights.

Non-IATA airlines, mainly low-cost carriers like the Irish Ryanair and the British Easyjet, already have a paper-free ticket system where travellers are registered in computers and present only an identity document at check-in.

IATA launched its drive for so called "e-ticketing" just over three years ago and now 84 per cent of travellers on IATA carriers fly without paper tickets.

The airlines body says China, one of the fastest-growing markets for air travel and host to next year's Olympic Games, is heading to be the first country in the world to operate an entirely paper-free ticketing system by the end of this year.

 

[simongr]

So spells the deathknell for the 20 segment DONE4...

 

[NM]

So spells the deathknell for the 20 segment DONE4...

I still find it hard to believe that a computer system is less able to cater for complexities than a manual or paper system. Any push set a 16-sector limit is artificial and aimed at imposing product restrictions rather than any real technical restriction. I am sure the GDS could be upgraded to support >16 sector itineraries if they really wanted to do so.

 

[cabco]

It probably will have some interesting effects in a number of places - I remember visiting the old LH office in Bligh St in SYD in 1979 and seeing a businessman reconfirming a half used RTW that seemed to have about 30 sectors left to get him back to Germany - I'm glad that I was never involved in writing that out by hand - or doing the fare calculation and rule check! It must have been one hell of a heap of 4 coupon tickets when he started out from the Ruhr or wherever.

Also a bloke who worked for many years at QF told me that someone rolled into the City in the mid '80s (Chifley Square?) with an unused half of a SYD-LON return on the Empire Route by flyingboat issued in 1938 and asked for, and received, a refund on the return half. Someone had to visit the store to find the original documentation!

Tony