Buh-bye Paper Tickets - IATA Sets 2008 Deadline for 100% Electronic Tickets

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, represents close to 300 airlines, and almost all international air traffic. Currently, a focus of IATA is to get airlines fully on board with electronic ticketing (ET). Their hoped-for deadline for saying buh-bye to paper tickets is May 31, 2008. 100% compliance is estimated to save the air travel industry up to $ 3 billion (U.S.) annually. IATA estimates that an electronic ticket costs about $1 to process versus $10 per paper ticket, and given that you can't 'lose' an electronic ticket, one can't help but wonder why the 100% hasn't yet been achieved.

However, there is the fact that traveling on more than one airline may mean that luggage cannot be tagged all the way through; so many airlines use different reservations/airport customer service programs so it has caused check-in issues even for partner airlines in the past (I can't even count the number of times in the past when I had to call a partner airline to find the electronic ticket of a customer traveling on both the airline I work for and their airline - very time consuming); and canceled flights can get complicated for passengers as a paper ticket at least gave you the option of trying for a spot on another airline.

The amount of electronic tickets seems to also vary greatly depending on where you travel. Almost all tickets I have encountered in the past year for travel within North America, to Europe, Asia and Australia/New Zealand have been electronic tickets. For travel to the Middle East, Africa, and South America paper tickets are still relatively common.

E-tickets certainly do have benefits - no more "lost" tickets (unless the airline can't find them); your e-ticket and itinerary can be faxed or e-mailed to you immediately following your purchase; potentially quicker check-in at self service kiosks; ease of making last minute changes to tickets. But you should certainly keep a copy of the electronic ticket and boarding passes should you need to for customer service issues, missing frequent flyer numbers, canceled flights, etc.

Will IATA's 100% e-ticket arrive by May 31, 2008? This may be an ambitious date given the fact that there are regional gaps regarding the use of electronic tickets over paper tickets. The May date is already a delay from the original deadline of January 1, 2008.