Hahn Air, a Dreieich, Germany-based company offering scheduled and charter flights, has become the world’s first airline to issue tickets using blockchain.
The move comes after Hahn Air entered a strategic partnership with open-source travel distribution platform Winding Tree, whose homegrown blockchain platform will be used in the new ticket-issuance system.
Hahn Air Will Accept Cryptocurrency Payments
The new system acquired by Hahn Air is multi-dimensional and offers several utilities including an efficient listing of inventories, timely management of reservation requests, and payment processing.
Another big element in this new offering is that Hahn Air customers can now book their tickets using cryptocurrencies, in addition to conventional payment methods including cash and credit card.
More specifically, the airline will be accepting Ether and LIF, the latter being the native token on Winding Tree’s blockchain. As of this writing, Lif is trading at $0.09747249 with a market cap of just over $2 million and a daily average transaction of just under $650.
There are no official words yet on whether Hahn Air plans on accepting other popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in the foreseeable future. Given Bitcoin’s high volatility, however, it might not make the smartest mode transaction for purchasing air tickets — although it can’t be said that ETH is immune from that problem.
For those not familiar with the company, Hahn Air currently offers charter and scheduled flights only within Europe. Besides its primary role as an airline, the company also offers distribution solutions for travel agents.
Secure and Efficient Ticket Booking Using Blockchain
Without delving much into technical nitty-gritty, the airline assured users that the new blockchain platform will lead to reduced cost and a greater range of travel options.
The underlying technology of the new system is 100% secure, said Jorg Troester, Hahn Air head of corporate strategy and government & industry affairs, in a conversation with ZDNet.
He further emphasized that because of the inherent tamper-proof characteristic of decentralized distributed ledgers, the data stored on the Winding Tree blockchain will remain secure under a trustless system.
According to Reuters, the first fliers to use these new blockchain-issued tickets include Frederick Nowotny, head of sales engineering at Hahn Air, Maksim Izmaylov, founder of Winding Tree; and Dave Montali, chief information officer of Winding Tree.
The new system is yet to be integrated into the airline’s commercial system. Any further step along that direction will only be taken after a thorough analysis of the maiden flight taken by the Hahn Air and Winding Tree top-executives.
Images are courtesy of Shutterstock.
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