Paper-less flight tickets likely soon

Only one in two airports and about one in two airlines in India have facilities to offer bar-coded boarding passes (BCBP) to fliers.

Bar-coded boarding passes eliminate the need for a paper ticket, ease security clearance and world over, 83% of all boarding passes are 2-D bar coded.

No wonder then that International Air Transport Association (IATA) is pushing Indian airports and airlines to also fall in line and begin investing in this procedure.

Already, the new airports of Hyderabad and Bangalore are 100% compliant in issuing bar-coded boarding passes and among the airlines, Kingfisher is also fully compliant. Eric Leopold, project manager for BCBP project at IATA, pointed out that Jet Airways is working on it. Delhi and Mumbai international airports are also beginning to equip themselves with this facility.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) — the two organisations who will decide on the security implications and implementation of this process at all airports — still appear lukewarm to the move. This despite an AAI project, which will equip 13 non-metro airports to issue such boarding passes. It’s a part of the AAI’s airport modernisation drive.

Leopold said the ability of an airport to scan 2-D bar-coded passes at entry can obviate the need for paper tickets and boarding passes can be directly sent to the passenger’s mobile phone — a regular practice in most countries around the world.

IATA had begun this project in 2005 and the deadline to make all airlines and airports in the world conform to this norm is December 2010. Leopold said Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines are working on installing the technology by which boarding passes would be available on mobile phones soon.