In other news... home printing and supply sales are expected to rise... ;)

in other, other news, egypt's unemployment has risen by 15% as the government struggles to find out what to do with the ticket-handers, the ticket-stampers, the ticket-rippers & the ticket-takers that are all no longer needed...

Uh... why the hell did I just get a paper ticket in the mail today for my flight to Las Vegas? Did Air-Tran not get the notice?

On an unrelated note, I promised I'd never fly them again... damn them for having the only flights that worked for me.

The way the airlines are going, we may see the Paper Airline soon, though.

Thank god. Let me share with you a scary story about paper tickets. This happened last November. I flew halfway around the world (from overseas to the USA and then back out) on a paper ticket. It's a long story, but the travel agency that arranged the ticket gave me a paper one. I'd only used a paper ticket one other time in my life, so I didn't realize the one main thing about paper tickets that a lot of people probably weren't aware of: the paper ticket is essentially like a movie ticket: losing it sucks.

I lost my paper ticket -- actually I simply left it in the back of the seat in front of me after 23 hours of travel. I didn't know this until three days before my departure. I called that the airline CSR didn't seem to know very much about paper tickets, so she said "don't worry, just go to the gate and show them your passport." (This was Delta Airlines.)

So I did. Well, when the ticket counter discovered it was a paper ticket, they were very adamant that I would have to BUY AN ENTIRE NEW ONE WAY TICKET TO MY DESTINATION. It would have cost well over $5,000 or $6,000 to do that (same day one way ticket halfway around the world). I freaked out, but remained visibly calm.

After about 15 minutes, they told me, well, since I was en route (since I had already flown to my destination) it turns out that instead I could just pay $200 and fill out a lost ticket form. Believe me, after being first told I would have to buy the whole one-way fare, being ripped off by Delta for $200 for a stupid lost ticket report seemed like a bargain.

The most annoying thing about it was (besides being told by a Delta CSR rep that there would be no problem) that the ticket counter people obviously sympathized and knew how ridiculously idiotic that policy was, but stood firm as if there was absolutely nothing they could do.

It actually took 15 minutes of me calmly reasoning with them for them to look more closely at their own rules to find out that in fact, I only had to pay $200 for a lost ticket report (which is stupid in its own right when your reservation information is staring at them form their computer screen).

But in the end they did explain to me that if I had lost that paper ticket before my initial departure I would have had to buy the fare again.

This still doesn't make any sense to me, but they were pretty adamant about that -- the paper ticket was (at least for Delta) your ONLY REDEEMABLE piece of paper for boarding a flight. If you lose it before you leave, tough tiddy: buy it again. (But if you lose it in transit, it's "only" $200 for nothing.)

So as far as I'm concerned: good riddance to the paper ticket.

If they did away with paper tickets, shouldn't that decrease the price? Oh wait now I see they just went ahead and added a convenience fee. That makes sense.

I've got a huge stack of paper tickets that were issued from the now-defunct Aloha Air and ATA. olegna's got a great point - the paper ticket allowed the airlines to say, "Meh! That's it! we don't have to deal with your reservation anymore!"

Such a hassle.

Now if they could just get rid of boarding passes and let you swipe ID or something to board. Less stuff to keep up with!

I remember having to fight traffic on I-95 around the Philly airport three times (once to the airport, back home, and then back to the airport) in 1998 when I realized I'd left my paper tickets at home (I'd been using them as a bookmark). What a pain. Granted, this was pre-9/11, so I was able to get to the airport 20 minutes before the flight left and still get on the plane. But paper tickets still need to the way of the dodo. I know I'm in your computer, you've got a record of my payment, and here's my passport - what else do you need?

Hmm, looks like United flights operated by AeroMexico don't count, so sayth my $30 charge to FedEx the paper tickets.

@stopNgoBeau: Then they will be able to "track" me and sell my information to the evil government. Don't you care about privacy? *insert 1984 quote here along with mouth-frothiness.*

@thesabre: my thoughts exactly

@olegna: This still doesn't make any sense to me, but they were pretty adamant about that -- the paper ticket was (at least for Delta) your ONLY REDEEMABLE piece of paper for boarding a flight.

One of the big reasons they wanted to get rid of paper tickets is that an issued ticket was like a signed check; the physical object was the carrier of the value. This led to all sorts of issues like stolen ticket stock. (You've probably noticed that with the new check rules, banks are no longer shipping paper around either. Same deal. Cost savings, and much less need to track and secure physical objects.)

My paper ticket story is a bit more amusing, since the bad part didn't happen to me. My wife and I were at an airline ticket office (back when those still existed), because we had to turn in some physical upgrade certificates (back when those still existed) to get our tickets issued. At the next desk, a man was getting a lost ticket replaced.

"Would you like an e-ticket?" asked the agent he was working with. "No. I don't trust those. I want a paper ticket."

Both my wife and I had the same thought: "if you'd picked an e-ticket to start with, you wouldn't be here getting it replaced, would you?" We didn't say anything until we left, since he was still there, still working on getting everything worked out, when we finished and headed home (with, IIRC, paper tickets because it was an international itinerary before those were generally doable as e-tickets).

@stopNgoBeau: I think they do that in Japan. ANA lets you wave your cellphone at the check-in desk, the security point, and at the gate instead of carrying paper stuff around. Unfortunately it's only for in-Japan flights (we all know that the TSA would have a fit if they tried to introduced something like this for Japan-US flights) and you have to have their frequent flyer card program stored on your phone (and it has to be one of the RFID-capable ones).