- Airline Flybondi announced it will allow passengers to resell their tickets.
- The tickets will be available for transfer until 72 hours before departure.
An airline is experimenting with allowing people to resell their tickets up to three days before their flight.
Flybondi, an ultra-low-cost airline based in Argentina, announced the trial at a recent aviation conference, according to Travel Weekly.
Flybondi CEO Mauricio Sana said on a webinar that the airline was inspired by the success of resale tickets in other industries, such as concerts, according to the outlet.
But resale markets are not without controversy and can lead to dramatically higher prices.
The clamor to get a hold of tickets for Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour this year saw prices rise as high as $33,000 due to people reselling tickets, eventually prompting a Senate hearing with TicketMaster executives.
An in February, music giant LiveNation, which owns TicketMaster, announced its support for a "FAIR Ticketing Act," which it says would crack down on ticket reselling websites after several Congress asked the DOJ to continue investigating TicketMaster.
StubHub said the legislation would actually help bolster LiveNAtion's grip on the market, and instead is supporting a "Boss Act," which takes aim at ticket resellers who use devices like bots in an attempt to gouge prices, according to Variety.
Flybondi's new ticketing system creates two versions of each ticket sold, one original ticket and one NFT ticket that is stored on the blockchain, according to the travel blog PYOK. The tickets can be resold up to 72 hours before the time of departure, and Flybondi earns a transaction fee whenever the tickets are resold, the report says.
The two tickets created by the system have synchronized seat numbers and itineraries, which allows the airline to trace the NFT ticket after it is resold, according to the report.
The new program will initially only be open for domestic flights, but Flybondi plans to open it to international flights too, travel blog SimpleFlying reported.
"We seek to give the client freedom to do what they want with the ticket and expand distribution," Sana said, according to the outlet. "In this way, we will continue taking passengers who would turn to the competition."
Flybondi, which is quickly growing, has doubled its fleet in the last year and recently received its fourteenth Boeing 737-800, the report says.
Flybondi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.