Continuing our series…our letter writing continued…
Receiving The Ticket
It used to be that you’d buy your ticket and a couple of days later, an envelope would arrive in your mailbox. Inside would be a booklet of thin cardboard with a green and white hatched pattern, which was your ticket.The reverse side had some harsh language about the airline’s limited liability. Nowadays the paper ticket as about as readily available as asbestos, and the look you’ll get if you ask for one is a mixture of intense confusion and pity.
So Eticket it would have to be. I filled in my credit card and other information on the airline website, and then, total confusion. I was given a confirmation page which I could print out, emailed an itinerary, and was absolutely clueless as to what to bring to the airport. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I had just spent hundreds of dollars, and I had received nothing tangible back. Visions of showing up at the airport and being turned away danced through my head. I quickly printed multiple copies of everything I could think of.
Our contributor speaks of the old style tickets, of which there are two types. The hard card stock ticket that he describes, and the flimsy ticket with red carbon paper. Most airlines, if you have a choice, will charge for the service of issuing a paper ticket. Paper tickets are most often issued by travel agents.
It is true, like paper money, which is a paper document that has value, backed by the Federal Reserve(in the US, at least), a paper ticket has value, backed by the airline and thus only as valuable as they make it. While it too has a monetary value, set in actual currency, it entitles you to a trip between Point A and Point B(And C, D, E, depending on your ticket).
Since airlines reserve the right, paper or electronic, to change flight times, points of connection, etc, at any time…your document is only as good as the airline that chooses to honor it, and thus unless you are concerned about them, an E-ticket is perfectly fine. You are asked to print a copy of the confirmation details and have it on you.
This is done for several reasons. Yes, it is very easy to doctor up an email confirmation…or even a boarding pass. They contain no security measures to prevent it, nor could they easily, as they are designed to be printed from one’s home printer. First, the document contains all of the legal information once printed on the back of tickets. It contains basic baggage and rule information…although the design of these documents vary. All confirmations contain your itinerary, your airline record locater, and your ticket numbers. This is all the information an airline needs to pull up your reservation. It also allows immigration officials and airport personnel without access to reservations systems to be aware of where you are going and act accordingly.
You should carry copies of any confirmation document with you. It is not necessary to carry all of it, unless you require the extra information. You should at minimum have the part of it that is specific to you. This goes for not only flight confirmations, but car rental, hotel reservations, etc.
Finally, there is the issue of having nothing tangible…you have a tangible document showing they issued you a confirmation….and a tangible debit to your account. We recommend you purchase tickets using credit cards. It means you can dispute charges for failure to provide service.
More to come…
