Lufthansa, one of Europe’s largest airlines, has recently teamed-up with Swiss blockchain startup Winding Tree to explore possible applications of the technology.
Said startup will assist Lufthansa in building and testing decentralized, blockchain-based travel apps, while Lufthansa will integrate its APIs with the Winding Tree platform, which is an Ethereum-based, decentralized business-to-business marketplace.
Lufthansa is interested to see whether booking, rebooking and traveler itinerary information could be put on a blockchain. On the other hand, Winding Tree will get access to experts in the field.
ICO investment included in the deal
The partnership between the two firms doesn’t end there. Under the deal, Lufthansa will also invest in Winding Tree’s forthcoming Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
Scheduled for February 1st, it will represent one of the few cases when a major company participates in an ICO, during which Winding Tree will be selling its own token called LIF.
It is unclear how much money Lufthansa will put into the venture, but we do know that Winding Tree plans to use the proceeds to fund the development of its platform. And eventually turn LIF into a currency for users to book travels.
“LIF is used for settlement and data transfer,” Pedro Anderson, co-founder of Winding Tree, told CoinDesk. “Anyone owning LIF tokens will be able to book hotels, flights and cruises … directly on the blockchain.”
Anderson went on to add that while Lufthansa is the only airline currently public with its interest in utilizing the platform, they may seek to include other partners in trials, as well.
Air France is also looking to embrace blockchain
Lufthansa is not the only airline looking to benefit from blockchain, with Air France aiming to take advantage of the technology, as well. Specifically, it is looking for ways to apply blockchain to track workflows within its aircraft maintenance systems.
According to Aviation Today, the company has been discussing the possibility in a webinar alongside Microsoft and Ramco Aviation, a company that develops software for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) systems for airlines.
During the session, innovation director for Air France KLM’s business unit James Kornberg said that he’s particularly interested in supply chain applications. “The four features of blockchain are resilience, traceability, integrity and disintermediation [and] are well suited to the aviation supply chain,” he said.
Needless to say, we expect other airlines to jump on the opportunity in no time as well, eventually putting all of our travel data — as well as data of the goods they are transporting — into a blockchain. That’s what this tech is all about, after all.