Paperless travel generates exercise books for needy school children

Lufthansa donates over 3000 books to schools in South Africa

Lufthansa passengers who opted for paperless boarding passes on their smart phones during the months of December and January have contributed toward the saving of 2,5 million printed boarding passes. Now the airline is donating this paper in form of exercise books to schoolchildren in need worldwide. Over 3000 will be distributed in South Africa to projects supported by Lufthansa’s staff charity “Help Alliance”. These are iThemba School Capricorn in Cape Town and the Safe House in Johannesburg. Furthermore, in order to support the local economies all exercise books will be purchased locally.

paperless boarding passesWayan Vota / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Lufthansa introduced mobile check in procedures for smart phone users in 2008 and strongly promotes this new technology as it is customer friendly, efficient and helps to save paper resources at the same time. The mobile boarding pass is an individual secure bar code that can be received via e-mail, text-message or download directly on smart phone devices like the I-Phone, Blackberry or Android-Phones. "Our customers worldwide enjoy digital services as they improve their travel experiences. Lufthansa together with its airport partners and authorities are working very hard to make ground procedures increasingly seamless, stress-less and paperless,” says Axel Simon, Director Southern Africa for Lufthansa German Airlines and Swiss International Airlines. Lufthansa customers can use fully paperless mobile check-in procedures at more than130 airports worldwide. However, customers can continue to use other ways to check-in for their Lufthansa flights as the airline continues to offer the self print boarding pass via its website as well as free check in at the airline's airport counters

The Help Alliance was founded by Lufthansa staff independently in 1999 by 13 Lufthansa employees. Its humanitarian aid activities focus on food and health programmes, schools, training facilities, orphanages and projects for street children. The aim is to promote self-sufficiency among people in need and to empower them to take action to improve their own living conditions. Today the airline group’s charity unites nearly 40 aid initiatives around the world. www.help-alliance.com.