FORT WORTH, Texas - American Airlines plans to move to 100 percent electronic ticketing in the next 18 months as a way to streamline the airport process and cut costs.

The airline will cease issuing paper tickets for wholly domestic itineraries by March 2003 and plans to stop issuing paper tickets for all other itineraries and eliminate or automate other paper transactions by December 2003.

In the interim, American will also increase its fee for a paper ticket to $20 on July 2 for those customers who qualify for an electronic ticket.

“This initiative to move to 100 percent e-ticketing will benefit our customers by providing a product that is easy to understand and use,” said Mike Gunn, American’s executive vice president-Marketing and Planning. “Also, we will improve the functionality of our self-service devices and increase the number of units across the system, which will eliminate waiting in lines at the ticket counter, and enable faster service.”

The e-ticketing initiative is part of American Airlines’ re-examination and refinement of its business model, one task of which is to simplify the airport process for customers.

As part of this initiative, American will implement 100 percent interline e-ticketing with those carriers that can meet the technical standards and will eliminate such agreements with carriers that cannot. Interline agreements among carriers allow baggage interchanges, passenger transfers and other transactions.

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