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An advanced electronic system for selling airplane tickets, recently launched in Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province, has enabled consumers to buy airplane tickets without going to a travel agency. The first of its kind in China, the new sales system is composed of hundreds of automatic machines providing various booking services, agency reported. By touching the machine's sensitive screen lightly, following its instructions, ticket buyers can get detailed information about scheduled flights all over China. They can buy airplane tickets by inserting credit cards into the machine, which will read the cards and withdraw the ticket money automatically from their bank accounts. A ticket bill will then be issued from the machine, which they can exchange for a boarding pass in the airport lounge. According to Zhang Baojian, chairman of China International Air Transport Association, there are 70 million tickets being sold annually all over China, each costing nearly 60 yuan during the entire procedure from production to sales. If the whole country uses this electronic sales system, involving no practical paper tickets, the state aviation departments will save 4 billion yuan (US$482 million) per year, said Zhang.