The End Of Paper Boarding Passes
A startup airline has made clear it will not ever offer paper boarding passes, with its chief executive predicting that such physical boarding passes will completely disappear by 2030.
CEO Predicts The End Of Paper Boarding Passes By 2030
We’ve seen the possibility of digital boarding passes for over 20 years now, but paper boarding passes are still available in almost all cases…a vestige of the past much like a passport or the dot-matrix printers airlines still use to print flight manifests with technology older than you are.
Tony Douglas, the CEO of Saudi Arabian airline startup Riyadh Air, is not going to follow the practices of predecessors as his carrier prepares to take off in 2025. He recently shared that there will be no paper boarding pass options on Riyadh Air.
In fact, Douglas believes that even phone-based boarding passes will disappear as more airlines embrace biometric scanning or fingerprinting.
To that end, Riyadh Air is creating an innovative new boarding system that will remind you of Amazon, Uber, and your banking app, not the familiar systems in use today by carriers around the world. “What we’ve designed is something that’s got more in common with Uber and Amazon,” said Douglas.
“We’re not starting with a legacy system and therefore we don’t need to switch. Existing airlines are trying to bridge a gap and it’s going to take three to five years for most of them.”
He contrasted this his legacy competitors:
“If you return an item, you get your money back. Yet if you book a trip involving a number of partner airlines and try to get a refund on one of the flights it takes 10,000 years because it was never designed with that in mind.”
That’s an exaggeration, but his point is taken: the current refund system for many carriers is cumbersome, especially when compared to Amazon.
The new Riyadh Air system is under development from San Francisco-based technology firm Flyr will include “a shopping basket function allowing multiple bookings from relatives or colleagues, even when traveling from different cities – and the ability to split or combine payments.”
Riyadh Air is not alone. In act, Irish budget carrier Ryanair is planning to beat Riyadh Air by eliminating all paper boarding passes by May 2025.
But I’m skeptical. Here in the USA, Alaska Airlines no longer issues paper boarding passes from airport kiosks, but does offer them for those willing to see an agent (who may not have a smartphone). I understand that airlines want to eliminate (or in the case of Riyadh Air never offer) paper boarding passes, but there is still a significant minority of the population, particularly older passengers, who may not have access to the latest smartphones. You don’t want to essentially say your airline does not welcome your business…
Judging by how long REAL ID has been delayed in the USA, I expect we will see paper boarding passes until I am an old man. But I understand the unique considerations of Riyadh Air or any other start-up: why introduce paper boarding passes in the first place if you can avoid it.
> Read More: Alaska Airlines No Longer Issues Paper Boarding Passes From Airport Kiosks…It’s Not So Bad