SEATTLE — The next breakthrough in paperless airline ticketing may be under your thumb – literally.

Alaska Airlines is exploring using passengers’ fingerprints to replace travel documents, driver’s licenses and credit cards now needed to navigate from airport curbs to jetliner seats.

If successful, it would be the first U.S. carrier to employ biometrics for boarding passes and inflight purchases and could spur wider adoption across the industry.

The digit scans are designed to shave crucial seconds at bag drops, checkpoints and passenger lounges and will likely appeal to harried travelers bogged down by long lines and shoe removal.

Multiplied across thousands of people slogging through busy concourses, the time savings would mean a “substantially faster experience,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst.

“Air travel is about moving quickly and yet airports are one of the places where travelers seem to move the slowest,” Harteveldt, who co-founded San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group, said in a phone interview. “Anything will help.”

The push is the latest effort by the unit of Seattle-based Alaska Air Group to use technology to distinguish itself from bigger competitors.

Alaska, the sixth-largest U.S. carrier, pioneered online ticketing and satellite navigation for jet landings in the 1990s, introduced wireless check-in in 2001 and last year became the first airline to accept Google Wallet and to test letting travelers tag bags at home.

Biometrics, the technology that uses human physical traits as a form of identification, is gaining popularity with governments and merchants.

Alaska is still in the early stages of developing its system, dubbed “e-thumb” by Robert Mann, an aviation consultant. The carrier started testing the technology Aug. 21 on passengers waiting to enter a lounge for top frequent fliers at its Seattle hub.

Encouraged by the response from travelers eager to jump the line, Alaska installed fingerprint readers within weeks at all four of its so-called Board Rooms.

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