Wave goodbye to the paper airline ticket, at last.
For months, predictions have been it will go the way of the Dodo.
Giovanni Bisignani, director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, made it official when he told a news conference in Montreal that it will be extinct by the end of May.
Replacing paper tickets, and the elaborate global system that processed them, with electronic ticketing will save airlines $3 billion annually, according to Reuters.But when the air transport association pronounced a death sentence on paper tickets three years ago, the idea had doubters, the wire service says.
But the demise of paper tickets has been rapid.
When the association started its program, only about 16% percent of tickets issued worldwide were electronic. The agency estimates that 84% of tickets are now electronic.
The move is even more advanced in the US.
The Airline Reporting Corporation, or ARC said that electronic ticketing last month accounted for almost 97% of tickets it settled.
There are competing claims as to which carrier introduced electronic tickets. But Bryan Wilson, the electronic ticketing project director at the air transport association, said that in 1995 United Airlines introduced the first electronic ticketing system that allowed travelers to complete flights using different carriers.
Report by David Wilkening
