German airline Hahn Air claims first blockchain-based tickets

European carriers are adopting the technology to make ticket distribution within the industry faster and more transparent.

2 min read

Nov 19, 2019

German airline Hahn Air is the latest carrier to embrace blockchain-enabled ticketing.

The airline, which offers scheduled and charter flights throughout Europe, announced on Monday that it’s partnered with open-source travel distribution platform Winding Tree to make the ticketing process faster, more efficient and more transparent.

“It is important to look into the future to understand how can we make distribution faster,” Jörg Troester, Hahn Air’s head of corporate strategy, government and industry affairs told Reuters.

The new ticketing process was off to a flying start, as the first passengers to use the new system flew from Dusseldorf to Luxembourg yesterday.

Hahn also provides distribution solutions for travel agents. After the flight, the airline planned to analyze the performance of the system and determine how it could be commercialized.

The company said that the Winding Tree platform enabled more efficiency in listing inventory, managing reservation requests and payments via cash, credit card, or cryptocurrency—via Winding Tree’s lif token (LIF) or ether (ETH).

Although Hahn Air claims to be the first airline to offer blockchain-based ticketing, operators throughout Europe are adopting the technology for varying applications. In July, S7 Airlines, Russia’s second largest carrier, announced that its own blockchain ticketing platform had raked in over $1 million within a month.

S7 said it employs an Ethereum-based private blockchain platform developed in collaboration with Russian commercial bank Alfa-Bank.

But the airlines’ plans don’t stop at blockchain tickets. Also in July, one of Europe’s biggest budget airline companies, Norwegian Air, announced that, as well as accepting bitcoin payments, it was planning to operate its own crypto exchange.

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