Etihad Airways is to introduce a surcharge on paper travel tickets from
June 28 in a bid to match global aviation standards, reduce airport waiting times and cut costs.

The Abu Dhabi based airline will set a minimum add on charge of $25 (Dh92) for its customers who insist on travelling with paper tickets at airports where e-ticketing is available.

Geert Boven, Etihad’s executive vice-president sales and services, said:  “Etihad’s drive to have our customers use electronic tickets is a move towards stress free travel. 

“There are no tickets to lose and there’s no need for last minute queues for tickets on departure.”

Switching from the old fashioned paper ticket to electronic ticketing is set to save the aviation industry $3 billion (Dh11 billion) annually, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Currently IATA processes 300 million paper tickets a year.  The cost to process an electronic ticket is $1 whereas a paper ticket costs ten times as much to administer.

Electronic tickets give air travellers a flight itinerary which contains a file confirmation number.  The passenger presents the itinerary and number at the airport check-in counter and gets an aircraft boarding pass.

The paper ticket surcharge for the following destinations is $25 (Dh92) (unless stated): Amman, Bahrain, Bangkok ($62/Dh228), Beirut, Brussels ($27/Dh99), Casablanca, Cairo, Dammam, Delhi, Dhaka, Doha, Dublin ($34/Dh125), Frankfurt, Geneva, Islamabad, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Jeddah, Kuala Lumpur, Karachi, Kuwait City, London ($50/Dh184), Lahore, Mumbai, Manila ($50/Dh184), Manchester ($50/Dh184), Munich, Muscat, New York, Paris, Riyadh, Toronto

E-ticketing is currently not available in: Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Tehran, Peshewar, Colombo, Khartoum and Damascus.
 
Etihad Airways is the national airline of the United Arab Emirates based in Abu Dhabi.

Currently Etihad offers flights to 43 destinations in the Middle East, Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.TradeArabia News Service