Re: "Not everyone has the £infrastructure to do that."
No. Among other things, airlines need to print the boarding passes on cardboard stock of a certain size (~1/3 of letter size in height, with a stub detachable on the side). These cardboard things need to be able to go through scanners/printers to verify and document passing through security, boarding etc.
Printing on forms, and cardboard, hundreds or thousands of boarding passes a day with other printers is FAR less reliable. You would need to change EVERYTHING. The sheets. The scanner where the passes go thorough. etc.
And it needs to be standardized around the whole world.
Changing any one thing in these chains is not easy, and likely to break the whole chain. You stick with it unless there's absolutely no other choice.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
