German airline Hahn Air has announced that it has issued the first airline tickets enabled by blockchain technology, in partnership with Winding Tree, an open-source travel distribution platform.

Furthermore, the airline said it flew passengers holding blockchain-powered tickets on its scheduled flight from Dusseldorf to Luxembourg on November 18.

The first blockchain passengers are Maksim Izmaylov, founder of Winding Tree; Davide Montali, chief information officer of Winding Tree; and Frederick Nowotny, head of sales Engineering at Hahn Air.

“We at Hahn Air are constantly exploring new technologies and we are proud to now demonstrate our technical capability to issue blockchain-powered Hahn Air tickets. We are pleased to be partnering with Winding Tree, the most established company when it comes to distributing travel inventory in the blockchain. Our goal is to investigate and monitor the opportunities this technology holds for travel distribution, even if widespread acceptance is still a vision of the future,” said Nowotny.

Izmaylov added: “While blockchain technology is currently almost exclusively associated with the cryptocurrency bitcoin, it bears great potential for all industries and endless applications. It will have an enormous impact on all areas of economy and commerce over the next decades. We at Winding Tree believe that blockchain will have the power, like NDC, to fundamentally change the face of travel distribution. With a broad knowledge, an innovative mindset and an unparalleled network, Hahn Air is the ideal partner for us.”   

Through the Winding Tree platform, Hahn Air is able to list inventory, manage the reservation requests, and receive payments once the booking process is complete. Accepted payment methods are cash, credit card, or cryptocurrency (LIF token or Ether).

The blockchain technology holds many advantages for the different parties involved in the process of booking an airline ticket:
• It is open-source, meaning all market participants such as airlines, travel companies and distribution systems can easily connect and exchange transactions.
• All market participants can directly interact with each other and perform transactions without intermediaries thereby reducing costs.
• It is 100 per cent secure. 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.  - TradeArabia News Service