Monday, September 3, 2007

End to the era of paper airline tickets

Airline paper tickets have been around for as long as we can remember. Reams of paper must be used up all over the world for air tickets . Thankfully, they will be a thing of the past and become a collector’s item as the Global airlines body IATA (International Air Transport Association)has officiated that its accredited members will fully upgrade to electronic paper-free ticketing from June 1st next year.The organisation, which has used etickets for three years said it had placed its last order for paper tickets.

The move will save an untold numbers of trees and apparently $9 per passenger though there is no word on whether we'll see that $9. The e-ticket system actually provides a better and faster service to travellers and travel agents can serve customers remotely.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's great..the lesser the load the better and the more the paper saved, again, the better!! people are waking up to the fact that paper should not be used unnecessarily and cutting down of trees must be curbed for the betterment of our environment..lets hope this is just the first rung of the ladder..

Alex said...

This is long overdue. Paper tickets cost us money and resources. This is not to mention when mistakes are made and tickets need to be reissued.

I have made my personal life almost paper-free. I only bank online. I keep all my documents in PDF format and organize them using a service called Yep (most of the time I use them is to email them to someone else anyway). And I recycle all my receipts and keep a copy at http://www.shoeboxed.com which is also where I keep my digital receipts.

Finally, if you are really interested in seeing the impact of all this paper we use go to http://www.dogwoodalliance.org
It's a little scary!

Thanks for the post.

Simon said...

Great idea! I hope they will find a way to extend that to casual travelers.

Eternalsoul said...

@alexandra
Will check on the sites you mentioned. Thanks.

@neoauteur
I guess its for all travellers.

Anonymous said...

This awareness should be extended to other sectors too-like utility bills,other transportation sectors even to cinemas etc. bringing the awareness to more basic levels.-ash