CHINA'S airlines stopped using paper tickets yesterday and began to adopt electronic tickets, in answer to a call by the International Air Transport Association, the main clearing house connecting airlines and travel agents.
Currently, e-tickets are generally used by most domestic carriers. Only a handful of international carriers and some for pertaining to infant tickets accepted paper ones.
"Electronic tickets will entirely replace paper tickets by the end of the year," said the expert, adding prices were expected to fall because operation costs would be reduced by using electric tickets.
Global airlines, struggling with surging fuel costs, also stopped offering paper tickets on most flights yesterday, completing a switch to all-electronic bookings that are 90 percent cheaper to handle.
The IATA will no longer supply paper tickets from yesterday, spokesman Steve Lott said last week. The group, which used to handle 340 million paper tickets a year, will now track all bookings online. Passengers will just get a print-out.
Electronic tickets already account for about 95 percent of bookings, driven by the rise of Internet sales and airlines seeking to cut US$3 billion a year in global processing costs.