Airlines have issued paperless tickets for several years now. Recently, they have begun experimenting with allowing travelers to print their own tickets using special bar coding technology located at commercial customer locations. The bar-code ticket system can be used to communicate with business customers' accounting systems and other internal databases to speed up the billing process. These tickets would be scanned at the airport in the same way as paper tickets or airport generated boarding cards, when the passenger boards the plane.
a. Describe the advantages to the airline of this process. Compare it to both travel-agent-issued paper tickets and to paperless tickets.
b. Describe the advantages to the customer of this process.
c. Review Capsule Case 2 on Down Under Airlines. How would this change affect the process you diagrammed for Down Under Airlines? Make a copy of your diagrams, and show the changes you envision.