Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) has voluntarily stopped accepting Airline and Life Networking Tokens (ALLN) — a cryptocurrency — for ticket purchases, due to concerns that doing so could disrupt the market order and lead to a race to the bottom, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said on Friday.
FAT told the Central News Agency that it has stopped using the system, but made no public statement.
The ALLN system, developed by FAT’s parent company, Huafu Enterprise Holdings Ltd (樺福集團), offered passengers discounted tickets as low as 55 percent of the original price, the carrier said.
The system, which was introduced in August last year, has the potential to generate tickets below the regulated minimum price for domestic flight tickets, the CAA said.
It could also create a vicious cycle with airlines pushed into a race to the bottom for cheap tickets on domestic routes, the CAA said.
The ALLN system, which has ambitions to become a leading blockchain-based system for real-world consumption, has another problem, the CAA said.
As a result of its marketing mechanism, FAT could inadvertently report inaccurate financial information, because fluctuations on the virtual currency market mean values stated in ALLN tokens could differ markedly when those tokens are converted into “real” money.
The CAA and Financial Supervisory Commission last year asked FAT to provide detailed information on transaction processes and accounting methods, but the company failed to do so.
FAT, which had about 2,000 tickets purchased using ALLN tokens last year, said that although it is suspending the use of the system, the currency can still be used to purchase tour packages from URTraveller (遠行旅遊), a local travel agency and Huafu subsidiary.
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