Most of the world's leading airports are moving to paperless travel, a transport communication specialist company said on Wednesday.

A survey had shown that self-service check-in was the trend in almost 80 percent of top airports world-wide, SITA said in a statement.

Those airports were planning to make self-service the primary means of check-in by 2010, as was already the case at 40 percent of the world's top 100 airports.

Just over half of the airports surveyed had rated the introduction of electronic documents as the technology which would have the most significant impact at airports.

SITA said bar-coded boarding passes sent directly to cellphones would be the key to genuine paperless travel.

Bypassing check-in counters had resulted in longer queues at baggage drop-off and security screening areas.

Airports would use video, Bluetooth and other technology to track waiting times at checkpoints such as security and immigration.

SITA's statement was released to coincide with the annual Aviation Security World 2009 Conference being held in Cape Town.