Chips Are Just The Ticket

Instead, it will be bred to become intelligent clever enough to know who you are, where you are going and where you should be sitting.

Last week, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) set out common standards for the way electronic ticketing and smart cards can operate internationally between airlines.

According to Mike Muller, senior manager passenger services at the IATA, by 2005, the vast majority of tickets are likely to be intelligent and the old paper tickets will gradually fade away.

Airlines are experimenting with different types of ticketing. Electronic ticketing so-called ticketless travel, involves booking with a credit card. No bits of paper need to be exchanged, you just turn up at the airport and show your credit card. But that leaves the problem of coming up with a quick automated identification. Some airlines, such as US carrier Delta and the German flag carrier Lufthansa, are experimenting with integrated circuit cards, or smartcards, on domestic routes. An alternative is the automated ticket and boarding pass, already in limited use. It is less intelligent than a smartcard, since it only has a magnetic stripe in which to store information rather than a chip. Swiped through a machine, the boarding card reconciles passengers with their baggage.

 

But it has the potential to develop into a new style alternative to the paper ticket, which could be attractive to travellers who prefer a piece of paper in their hand.

Electronic ticketing is attractive to airlines because of its potential to reduce costs. Muller says that a conventional paper ticket typically costs $8 (