Do you remember? As a rule, it’s probably been one to two years – possibly even sometime in the last few months – since you’ve stood at the airline ticket counter with a many-page paper ticket, waiting until it’s finally your turn. Or since you lost sleep (or gained a few new gray hairs) over a misplaced ticket and had to deal with the all-powerful travel-bureaucracy gods. Today – unless you have to check larger pieces of luggage – longer waits at the check-in desk ought to be a thing of the past, just like fears of missing a flight because you’ve lost or forgotten your ticket.

Since January 1, 2008, thanks to the introduction of “electronic ticketing”, a new age has begun. Passengers now reach their airplanes faster, tickets can no longer get lost and money is saved. An e-ticket is a paperless electronic ticket that is stored in the airline company’s computer system. In order that travelers have a secure backup, they are sent e-mail confirmation about their reservation, but this is purely informative. On the day of their flights, they only need to identify themselves with their passport or ID card and are given a boarding card that allows them to go directly to the gate. In effect, this makes the passenger his or her own ticket!

Virtual tickets are also highly advantageous for airline companies. “On average, an airline company pays nine euros for a paper ticket – and only one euro for an electronic one,” says Bryan Wilson, project manager for electronic ticketing at the global air association IATA. If the airline industry exclusively used electronic tickets, it would save over three billion euros annually. It’s no wonder that according to IATA, 93% of all globally issued flight tickets are now issued electronically.

According to aviation experts, however, this is only one step towards significantly increasing the efficiency of air traffic. Just like the electronic ticket, comprehensive automatic check-in systems, radio systems for every piece of luggage and passenger controls using biometric data will soon increase overall airport efficiency. Until then, however, 30 million paper tickets that have not yet been issued must be collected and turned into recycling paper. And that will certainly be a great deal of work: they are stored at over 60,000 travel agencies in 200 countries.