No more paper tickets as airlines go fully e-ticketing
Saving the trees and money, 240 IATA carriers are ditching the paper airline ticket by the end of Sunday.
The AFP reported that the 240 carriers belonging to IATA are finally ditching the paper ticket, with the last paper tickets sold Saturday. The International Air Transport Association estimates savings of three billion dollars a year. By the end of February, 94 percent of IATA members had already ditched paper tickets.
How is this switch saving airlines money? Well, the issue and handling of a paper ticket costs an average of 10 dollars while an electronic one costs a mere dollar. IATA’s calculations also has the paper elimination saving about 50,000 trees per year.
“From June 1, no travel agent will be able to issue a paper ticket,” an IATA spokesman said.
Already bought a paper ticket before then? No worries, the ticket is still valid and will be honored.
This might well be a start for the ‘paperless’ ideal pushed years back. With fuel prices being the way they are now, this could just be part of a whole slew of cost-cutting measures by airlines. The question is: will the effort to make airline travel affordable bring risks to flight safety? Will saving money on air transport lead more companies to teleconference as much as possible instead?
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