Hahn Air issues first airline ticket on the blockchain

Hahn Air is the first airline that issued a real-world ticket enabled by blockchain technology on the open-source travel distribution platform Winding Tree. It is also the first airline to fly passengers holding blockchain-powered tickets on its scheduled flight from Dusseldorf to Luxemburg on November 18th, 2019. The first “blockchain passengers” were Maksim Izmaylov, Founder of Winding Tree, Davide Montali, CIO of Winding Tree, and Frederick Nowotny, Head of Sales Engineering at Hahn Air (photo). 

“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,” commented Frederick Nowotny.

Maksim Izmaylov adds:  “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% 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.