A crime has occurred in Kunming, Yunan Province involving airline e-tickets that has exposed a major flaw in China's e-ticketing system.

Airline companies like China Southern, Air China, and China Eastern are all quickly changing over to use e-tickets for their travelers, and though there have been some obstacles — such as adequate invoicing of ticket purchases — most companies seem to be smoothly integrating the new system into their operations.

The suspect, surnamed Chen, is reported to have pretended to be a salesperson representing a flight ticketing agency, and lured a buyer with a 70% discount into booking 13 round-trip e-tickets between Kunming and Ningbo, which were worth a total of RMB21,480. The buyer said he checked with the airline ticket sales department that night, and confirmed that there was a record for these tickets. But when he checked again later on January 12, he found that those tickets sold by Chen were fake ones.

Police said that because passengers and agents can get the refund directly if they return their e-tickets with the ticket vouchers, criminal can take advantage of this rule to return the e-tickets and get the money after the buyer's check the validity of the tickets. They reminded consumers to choose legal ticket dealers to buy e-tickets until this loophole is fixed.