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Istanbul: An unexpected shower of shredded paper tickets descended on delegates at the 64th IATA Annual General Meeting as IATA director-general Giovanni Bisignani announced that the body's 240 members have achieved 100 per cent e-ticketing from June 1.
This was the culmination of four years of efforts. The decision makes both economic and environmental sense considering that a paper ticket costs an average of $10 to process while an electronic one costs just $1. With over 400 million tickets issued through IATA's settlement systems annually, the industry will save over $3 billion each year in paper costs besides making peace with the greens.
The first e-ticket was issued in 1994. By 1997, IATA had adopted global standards for e-ticketing. But the evolution was slow. IATA conceived its 100 per cent e-ticketing plan at its 2004 meeting in Singapore as oil prices approached $40 a barrel. "The paper ticket has served us well, but its time is over," said Bisignani.
IATA has contacted 60,000 travel agents in more than 200 countries to collect some 32 million unused paper tickets in the system. "An era has ended," said Bisignani. "If you have a paper ticket it's time to donate it to a museum."
History: Retracing evolution
Paper tickets date back to the 1920s. As standardisation of travel documents became crucial to the growth of the industry, the IATA developed the first standard hand-written ticket for multiple trips in 1930.
The first ticketing revolution occurred in 1972 with automation. The IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) for travel agents began in Tokyo that year. This led to the birth of the IATA neutral paper ticket. For the first time the IATA logo appeared on the cover of tickets.
The next revolution took place in 1983 when magnetic strip on the ticket back was introduced. This allowed the ticket information to be stored electronically on the ticket itself.
At its peak, 285 million of IATA neutral paper tickets (both versions) were printed in 2005.
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