You've watered the hydrangea, got your passport, cancelled the papers and set the video for The Apprentice. But isn't there one last pre-holiday ritual you've forgotten? Ah yes. You just need to tear the house apart looking for your plane ticket.

Well, no more. From tomorrow airlines' paper tickets are heading to the great shredder in the sky. As of June 1 International Air Transport Association (IATA) members, who make up 94 per cent of all airlines, will use only electronic tickets (e-tickets).

Turning up at Heathrow and explaining to a check-in agent trained at the Stalag Luft charm school that your proof of travel to New York was accidentally flushed down the loo will be no more.

Ever since Southwest Airlines in the US - followed here by carriers such as easyJet and Ryanair - started issuing a reference number rather than a ticket, most of us have got used to paperless travel.

It's all a far cry from when I worked at a large travel agency in West London. Daily the calls would come. I remember a New Zealander: “My ticket was in my jeans' pocket and I put them in the wash. Does it matter?” Of course, they'd be travelling the same day, and yes, putting a ticket to Auckland on a hot cycle did matter.

People assumed - incorrectly - that we could just press a button and issue another one, but because fraudulent claims of “lost” tickets were common the answer was no. There were forms to fill in, couriers to be organised, credit card payments to be retaken and teeth to be gnashed.

Tony Russell, managing director of Trailfinders, remembers a woman who called him in a panic from Thailand. “She'd had a row with her husband so he ripped up her ticket to stop her coming home. Unfortunately for him, we were able to get the airline office in Bangkok to reissue her ticket and they travelled back together. In stony silence I presume.”

I've always found a certain romance to holding a ticket in your hand, even with its small-print references to the Warsaw Convention and bizarre codes. Why did Y mean economy? And what form of pond life were you if it said Q, L, W or N? Surely secret airline language for “seat next to loos, serve meal last”?

“R” was the most coveted, as it was only used for Concorde, but even supersonic passengers got the standard-issue coupons after spending megabucks.

A paper ticket could be as thick as a small book, full of exotic journeys, packed with promise - Bali to Surabaya, Cusco to Arequipa. E-ticketing on the other hand can't cope with more than 16 sectors at one go - a potential problem for someone doing a year-long, round-the-world trip.

That ticket wasn't “just” a scrappy bit of paper. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when travel was still glamorous, their covers were glam too; a picture of an Ethiopian valley, a Hawaiian island or an alluring stewardess. By the Eighties and Nineties they had become drab, just as flying generally has become a drab experience.

A paper ticket was proof that you wouldn't be in the office for two weeks, that you didn't have to face your useless boss or be stuck in traffic jams for a fortnight. A piece of A4 printed out next to Bob in accounts doesn't really cut it.

By the numbers

400 million paper tickets processed by IATA every year

50,000 trees saved a year by not printing tickets

$3 billion saved by the airlines from e-ticketing

Source: IATA

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