It will not be long before paper tickets for a plane, train or bus seem as quaint as propellers, steam and conductors do today. Electronic travel passes are already widespread in many cities. And on June 1st the airline industry completed its conversion to electronic tickets, putting yet another nail in the coffin of the paper-based kind.
This has been quite an achievement--not least because it was completed in just four years. A task force was set up in 2004 by the International Air Transport Association, a trade group, to manage the change among the 240 airlines it represents, covering more than 90 percent of international flights. Tens of thousands of travel agents also had to change their systems.
Source: The Economist, http://www.economist.com