German airline Hahn Air became the first airline in the world to issue a blockchain technology enabled real-world airline ticket in partnership with Swiss decentralized and open-source travel distribution platform Winding Tree.
It is also claimed to be the first airline to fly passengers holding blockchain-powered tickets on its scheduled flight from Dusseldorf to Luxemburg on November 18, 2019.
The airline said the first "blockchain passengers" on the flight were Winding Tree Founder Maksim Izmaylov and its Chief Information Officer Davide Montali as well as Hahn Air Head of Sales Engineering Frederick Nowotny.
Apart from issuing blockchain-powered tickets, the Winding Tree platform can also list inventory, manage reservation requests and receive payments after the booking process is complete. The current accepted methods of payment include cash, credit card, or cryptocurrency such as Ether or LIF, Winding Tree's native token.
Using blockchain technology, all market participants such as airlines, travel companies and distribution systems can easily connect and exchange transactions. They can directly interact with each other and perform transactions without intermediaries thereby reducing costs.
The platform is also 100 percent secure as all of the necessary information is stored in a decentralised ledger which is verified by millions of sources and therefore cannot be changed or tampered with.
Winding Tree is already working with other airlines such as Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Air New Zealand, Air France-KLM, Air Canada, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings for other services.
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