Since airBaltic’s release of 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFT) called ‘Planies’ at the beginning of October 2022, the Latvian national airline has issued more than a million loyalty programme (airBaltic Club) points.
In less than two months, over 2,300 Planies have been issued, of which above 80% have been staked on the staking platform. That allows their owners to passively earn loyalty points, including business class upgrade vouchers and other benefits.
“We continue to see a high interest in our NFTs both locally and internationally, thereby obtaining confirmation that our chosen path of digital innovators in the aviation industry is correct,” said Martin Gauss, President and CEO of airBaltic.
“Owners of Planies are already receiving advantageous benefits of this programme, thus showing the real added value of it in practice.
“We will continue developing and promoting this product and the use of block-chain technology, and not only within our loyalty programme, but also in different processes of the airline too.”
Planies are digital collectible NFTs, each of them consisting of a unique cartoon artwork of an aircraft with different traits, such as mouth, eyes, wings, engines and other. A total of 10,000 unique Planies have been produced on a dedicated website (planiesnft.com). After the initial sales, it is possible to collect or trade them on the OpenSea marketplace.
airBaltic was the first airline in the world to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to purchase flight tickets in 2014. Later in 2021, airBaltic became the first airline internationally to issue NFTs.