My understanding of the lore is that it was invented by Southwest Airlines or a company they acquired. That's what I heard on a How I Built This podcast episode with the founder of JetBlue. It's also mentioned in this research paper here https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Historical-adoption-of-e-tickets-by-IATA-airlines-Data-sources-IATA-and-Peter-P_fig9_268425966

Strangely, when I was googling I found what I suspect to be planted misinformation in a Bangkok Post article where someone named Joel Goheen claims to have invented the eTicket on JRG Airlines (https://www.bangkokpost.com/life/social-and-lifestyle/388116/a-ticket-to-ride#).

JRG Airlines does not exist, and appear to be just the initials of Joel R Goheen. However, he appears on a U.S. Patent for eTicketing for 1994 the same time they started using eTickets. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5724520A/en)

I think it's really strange. I did some googling of his name and eTicket and there appears to be what to me looks like a lot of planted answer on websites stating Joel R Goheen invented the eTicket but with weasel words and no proof to actually prove that.

On one hand, CNN and other major news sources and articles credit SouthWest with first using the eTickets. and JRG Airlines seems clearly fake or at least completely lost to history. But, this gentleman owns the patent. Could he be a patent troll?

I think there's more to this story. Does anyone have some insight?