Even if you have an e-ticket, there’s something you shouldn’t forget
Besides, of course, your identification. It’s your electronic ticket number.
Electronic or e-tickets as they are called, are getting to be standard. Most U.S carriers won’t issue paper tickets anymore, and if they do, they generally charge extra. And IATA - the International Air Transport Association - is close to their goal of 100 percent e-tickets. Even skeptical travelers have become used to the concept and are relaxing about not having paper in hand.
But don’t get too relaxed. Especially if your itinerary includes more than one airline.
I just got another call from a client at the airport. And it happens at least once a week. She flew out on Northwest to Boston via Minneapolis, and was flying home on United. The gate agent told her “You don’t have a ticket,” and wanted her to buy a new one.
Fortunately, this client called me, and I gave her the ticket number. I could hear in the background “Oh, there it is.” And she got her boarding pass.
Had I or another agent not been available, we would have had to hash it out with United and/or Northwest’s refund department.
Most e-tickets work smoothly. But if you are in the minority when they don’t, it’s no fun. I missed a plane myself last week because a Delta agent couldn’t pull up a United electronic ticket on a close connection in time for the flight.
Besides having more than one airline on the ticket, other factors that increase the chances of a problem include having changed your ticket, having made a reservation that was canceled at any time before you bought your ticket and having had any schedule changes on the ticket.
So what’s a traveler to do?
If the fare allows, ticketing each airline separately helps with check-in, though this may expose you to secondary screening because the airline will show it as one way tickets. But having that ticket number in hand, whether as a receipt or a printout, will definitely increase your chances of solving any problem.
And the trip you save may be your own.
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10 Responses to “Even if you have an e-ticket, there’s something you shouldn’t forget”
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Great tip, Janice. I always bring my itinerary with me. Now with TripIt, it’s easier to just bring one to two sheets instead of several of them.
WIth respect to issuing one way tickets, when the itinerary has multiple carriers, there is one big potential problem that must be considered. If you need to make changes to the ticket, you are faced with change/exchange penalties on both tickets - this could more than double the fees associated with a single ticket.
As I packed for yet another trip, I was asking myself, why do I always bother bringing my itinerary along. Now I know. Thanks.
Note to Dubious. Good point, and as a travel agent I wrestle with the tradeoff somtimes. But for example if a client has flown out on United and back on American and you need to change the return on American you have to reissue the ticket through United, which has its own set of problems.
And if you are combining a nonrefundable fare with a refundable fare then it’s a whole newe set of issues. Then it’s almost always better to issue two tickets.
The short version, it’’s seldom as simple as the airlines would like for you to change an electronic ticket. Though at least we don’t have to deal with lost paper tickets these days.
There is a further twist to why you need to take the e-ticket receipt that the AIRLINE issued to you. International travel. Immigration officers don’t have access to e-ticket databases. Many countries want you to prove that you are going to leave before they let you in (the USA is one) and they want to see that e-ticket receipt because it has the ticket number on it. The AIRLINE receipt also contains all the terms and conditions and strictly speaking the airline should not let you travel without those.
Now, multiple airlines are a different issue. If multiple airlines also means multiple tickets then you have a separate contract for each ticket. If the whole itinerary is on one ticket a change in one place that causes a consequential change further on the itinerary means that the delivering carrier has to put things right. Put that same itinerary on multiple tickets and the delivering carrier can wash their hands of responsibility.
I had a minor headache with Alaska recently. First, I bought a non-refundable ticket, but then had to cancel my trip because the event date changed. I ended up booking a different ticket to attend the event, so I had an unused electronic ticket.
A couple of weeks later, I booked a new itinerary with the unused ticket. Because the city pairs were different, it took the phone agent a while to sort it all out and compute the final fare and issue the new electronic ticket.
Next, on the day of my outbound travel, there was a delay and I had to be rerouted because I wouldn’t make my original connection. The reroute was apparently done while I was traveling to the airport, because the itinerary in the computer didn’t match what I expected. Also, the boarding pass for my connecting flight indicated “flight coupon required.” Fortunately, the agent figured it out, fixed the problem and printed a new boarding pass.
Finally, the reservation disappeared from my online account, so for the return trip I could not use online checkin and had to call to be sure I still had a reservation.
Fortunately, I had both the old and new electronic ticket numbers at hand, which made it easier every time.
If you’re a terrorist, buy a round trip with a credit card. What do you care about the extra expense ? You’re not going to be there when the bill comes in.
Janice–the two ticket approach may work for the person that is only traveling with a carry on but with two tickets you will need to reclaim your luggage at your connection airport and re-check it.
If it is a tight connection, there will be no way to do that…go to baggage claim, go to ticketing…go to security AGAIN….
John, good point and I apologize for confusion. What I meant was if you were flying one way on one airline, the other way on another. In those cases check-in for the return flight is more likely to be a problem than a roundtrip with the same airline. And of course, both airlines blame the other.
But I thought that the whole thing about an e-ticket is that it saves money because it isn’t printed! Basically, by you printing out your itinerary, the airline is just offsetting their printing costs to you, the passenger! And, of course, that’s not really fair!
I remember reading somewhere (I can’t remember where though) about an e-ticket system that would send the information to your cellphone complete with the barcode that can be scanned at the gate directly from your cellphone display. This, to me, seems to be the ultimate in convenience! Receive your e-ticket onto your smartphone, get to the gate, pull up that ticket and wave it under the barcode scanner…simple…
I wonder if such a system will take off
Ed
web/gadget guru