[Quarondeau]

Airlines have hugely benefited from moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones, where everything is done in the airline's app. Even if a few flights get turned around now and then, that seems trivial compared to the benefits:

- No need to print/distribute physical tickets

- Check-ins via the app reduces the need for ground personnel

- They can push inflight menus, shopping items, promotions etc.

- Flight updates and other notifications can get pushed to your device

- Integration of loyalty systems like airmiles

- They get to track various user behaviors

[ghaff]

Passengers have benefited as well. Traditional tickets weren’t quite like cash but they were a big hassle to replace if lost.

[Zak]

Paper tickets, yes. Paper boarding passes, no. Replacing a paper boarding pass has been easy since airlines switched to an electronic ticketing system where the actual ticket is an entry in the airline's database.

[ghaff]

The person I was responding to was talking about tickets. I will print a paper boarding pass if I'm at home and I can print it easily when I check in in advance but I just do it at the airport if it's not convenient. (I don't like making myself more dependent on my phone than I need to be.)

[Zak]

That comment introduces some confusion with "moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones" before giving a mixed list of benefits of e-tickets and mobile boarding passes.

E-tickets were introduced in the 1990s, and essentially all airlines were using them by 2008. They don't have anything to do with phones. Mobile boarding passes are a more recent development.