First Airline to Issue Blockchain Tickets

A German airline named Hahn Air, which offers scheduled and charter flights within Europe, claims to be the first to grant access to passengers presenting a blockchain-based ticket.

The airline Hahn Air has a small fleet but has used an open-source ledger to issue three blockchain-based tickets from Dusseldorf to Luxembourg.

Although these are the first commercial blockchain tickets to be accepted by an airport there is still a lot of work before Hahn Air incorporates them commercially. The tickets issued were used by the airline head of sales team and two Winding Tree executives.

For us, it is important to look into the future to understand how we can make distribution faster – Jörg Troester, Hahn Air’s head of corporate strategy and government & industry affairs commented.

Hahn Air is not at the point of commercializing the blockchain-powered tickets, however, the airline is researching the matter and will analyze the details to better understand how commercialization can be achieved.

We are not at that point right now – Troester said.

As well as dealing in flights Hahn Air is also a distribution system for agents. Winding Tree Platform is used for inventory, reservations, payments, and bookings. The company accepts cash, credit card, and cryptocurrency specifically the lif token or ether.

Pedro Anderson, Winding Tree’s chief operating officer and co-founder commented “One of the things that we are working on our side is the challenge that comes up when you create an open marketplace – how to ensure that anybody who gets access, whatever you’re selling or buying, that the business on the other side is of good standing”

Since making the announcement of the blockchain-based tickets a Hanh Air spokesperson has since commented to clarify the news:

Let me clarify: Hahn Air does not accept cryptocurrency for bookings at this point. Please also note that Hahn Air is a B2B company and only offers its services to travel agencies and airlines. This means that only travel agents (online and offline) can make bookings of our airline partners via the major global distribution systems (GDSs). We do not offer our services to passengers directly

Recently there have been reports of a rise in Crypto and Blockchain jobs.

Image source by Hanh Air