In an effort to save money and inconvenience customers, Delta has discontinued their ticket jackets, much to the dismay of seasoned air-traveler, Greg. For the uninitiated, ticket jackets are the handy-dandy miniature document organizers that allow you to neatly store tickets, boarding passes and itineraries. He was disappointed to learn that Delta had discontinued this mini-marvel of personal organizers which actually boasts a rich history in aviation. His letter, inside…

Hello –
I checked at the Delta self-service kiosk this morning for my flight from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale. I printed my boarding pass, itinerary and receipt from the kiosk and reached for the ubiquitous blue paper Delta ticket jacket, only there were none. I went to drop off my bag and asked for a ticket jacket – I like to keep my boarding pass and other documents, plus my baggage claim sticker all organized in one place. The woman checking me in informed me that Delta discontinued the use of the ticket jackets as of Monday in order to help cut costs! Wow. That is a bit extreme. That’s several pennies worth of paper that, although I’m sure some posters will belittle the concept and my desire to have the jacket, make a big difference for a frequent business traveler such as myself. Other airlines, such as Airtran, subsidize these jackets by printing advertisements inside the folder. This may sound minor, but it was a useful item to have. Not that they are eliminating all paper, now the are providing a separate sheet with ticket Terms and Conditions in the slot that used to hold ticket jackets. I have attached an image of both sides of this slip.

In an additional interesting piece of this experience, I was given a complimentary Medallion upgrade to first class at the time of boarding. On Delta, the gate agent scans your boarding pass, a new boarding “coupon” is printed and handed to you and the original boarding pass is taken by the gate agent. This normally isn’t a problem, but since there is no longer a ticket jacket to stick the baggage claim sticker on, the sticker now goes on – you guessed it – the boarding pass that you get at check in! So, not that I have needed a claim tag in any of my travels, but if it is important enough for them to give it to you – it is your “receipt” after all – then it
should be important enough to keep, right?

All in all, a short-sighted move on Delta’s part and it really only saves a few cents per ticket.

Thanks Consumerist

Delta, you make us sad. We loved ticket jackets for their neat design, foldy fun and secret slots. The ticket jacket always made sure that the proper document was easily accessible, yet secure and organized when we jammed the whole thing in our back pocket. We hope you realize that the paper-pennies you are pinching will be negated by fumbling passengers who will be spending a few extra seconds managing their travel documents. Multiply these few seconds by thousands of passengers and you should begin to see the error in playing God with our ticket jackets.

(Photo: Getty)

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