Passenger Mobile Airline Ticket Purchases Rise

Around 50 per cent of airport passengers would use their mobile phones to pay for their airline flights if they had the option, new research shows.

Carried out by WorldPay, the research took the form of a survey in which 4,500 airport passengers participated. Of these, only six per cent had previously bought airline tickets through their mobiles, while over 60 per cent were ok with the extra fees placed on airfares but 28 per cent said they'd had experience of ‘hidden charges.'

As for how much passengers were prepared to pay on top of standard airfare costs, the percentages given averaged out to 3.8 per cent.

Mobile Ticket Purchases

The airport passengers questioned for WorldPay's Perfect Passenger Payment survey were quizzed in nine countries: Spain, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, China, Brazil, the US and the UK. Also assessed for the mobile ticket purchases survey were representatives of over 50 passenger carriers, covering a variety of budget, regional and worldwide airlines.

Chinese passengers were found to be ahead of everyone else when it came to using mobile phones to purchase airline tickets, with circa 30 per cent of them having done so over the past year. On average, each passenger's mobile phone ticket purchase took 25 minutes from start to finish, with Japanese passengers managing to do it in 20 minutes but, Brazilian passengers, a much slower 32 minutes.

Mobile Airline Tickets

"Consumers are increasingly embracing technology such as smartphones and tablets to purchase goods and services online and this report shows that there is a demand for among customers to be able to purchase airline tickets using mobile technology", WorldPay's chief product officer, Phil McGriskin, explained in a company press release on the Perfect Passenger Payment survey.

He continued: "Currently only a small percentage of airlines offer mobile payments to their customers but a high percentage of customers, particularly frequent flyers, would like the option to be made available. As more airlines embrace mobile technology for other parts of the airport-to-flight experience, we expect this to be extended to the payment process."

iPhone image copyright TakuyaMurata - Courtesy Wikimedia Commons