Business and Finance

Chinese air ticketing goes fully electronic

Posted by Bill Zhang, October 23, 2006 4:02 PM

Xinhua reported last week that the China Air Transport Association (CATA) has stopped providing paper flight tickets and hopes to eliminate them in China by the end of this year. In the meantime, airlines will continue using exisiting stocks of paper tickets.

The cost of an electronic ticket is about a tenth of that of a paper air ticket, according to the IATA, which is requiring its 261 member airlines to abandon all paper tickets by the end of 2007. See this English Xinhua story for more.

There are currently 2 Comments for Chinese air ticketing goes fully electronic.

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Comments on Chinese air ticketing goes fully electronic

I think this will be very good for the Chinese travel seasons of the Spring Festival (Late January / Early February), Labour Day (May 1st to 7th) and National Day (October 1st - 7th) holidays.

Other countries have had problems as the article below shows but maybe China's control over Air Line Carriers may prove to make E-ticketing very convenient to the travellers and efficient to the carriers.

"Flying direct or nonstop with an e-ticket poses few problems. In fact, consumers find it convenient dealing with less paper. If a flight is canceled or delayed, however, it could take time to search for another flight because most airlines don't have the interlining agreements that allow one carrier to honor another's electronic ticket." Source

Posted by: robertmorrison | October 23, 2006 5:22 PM

This is definitely a good thing. If you misplace a paper ticket, they actually make you go buy a new one(!), but with e-tickets, you don't have that problem.

Posted by: alex | October 24, 2006 3:00 AM