Shadow Footprints

Qantas pressures agents to drop paper tickets

Qantas is really pushing for the use of e-tickets. There are several disadvantages to the use of e-tickets, pointed out by The Practical Nomad.

While airlines are trying to promote e-tickets and ticketless travel as a convenience to passengers, e-tickets were developed and are being promoted solely to serve the interests of the airlines, not those of passengers. For your own protection, insist on paper tickets whenever possible. They may cost you extra (a few airlines and agencies already surcharge paper tickets, and others are expected to follow suit), but they are worth it. Most users of e-tickets don't realize their drawbacks, and wouldn't use them if they did.

• Flight reservation computers may be down
• Hard to use your credit card to buy someone else a ticket
• no proof of outbound transportation as may be required by immigration
• Can't be honoured by other airlines if your airline or flight has delays

He goes into details of these points.

I've had to use electronic tickets a few times in NZ, with out any problem, apart from the first when the person in my old work had booked me to fly to Christchurch but omitted to tell me which airline. In the US I recently flew from Las Vegas to San Diego on Southwest. There was a large check-in queue which we bypassed because we had carry-on baggage only and e-tickets.

- shadowfoot,