I usually buy my plane tickets through Expedia, and while normally they issue me e-tickets, sometimes I get a message saying “E-tickets are not available for this flight”, and that I will have to use paper tickets instead.
Personally, I find paper tickets to be a major hassle. For example, to get a flight changed, instead of just calling up the airline or Expedia, I had to drive to the damn airport, go to the ticket counter, and exchange my paper tickets there. So why aren’t e-tickets available for every flight? What is it about certain flights that makes e-tickets unavailable?
I believe it as simple as the fact that some airlines don’t use them. Also if you’re going to some airports, especially ones overseas they aren’t equipped to deal with them.
But there are probably a lot of other reasons that a travel agent might know the answer to.
I’ve worked in airline reservations for more than 10 years, though not specifically in E-Ticket.
A lot of the airlines (most) are hosted on ancient IBM mainframes, with software written in the 1960s. In those days, there wasn’t E- anything, let alone E-Ticket. Since the concept of E-Ticket was invented a few years ago, the airlines have been scrambling to update their mainframe software to support it - but they haven’t all got around to it yet. Therefore, when you fly on certain airlines, you can’t have an E-ticket because they don’t support it.
I believe that there may be FAA/IATA regulations concerning which itineraries may be E-ticketed, but I’m not 100% sure about that.
You might want to try a search on Google for ‘E-ticket regulations’.
E-tickets are not usable on many international routes because the other country requires you to show your ticket home or onward at the immigration counter. That’s intended to prevent people from entering on temporary tourist visas when they really intend to stay and work.
BobT and DarrenS: Thanks for the answers; however they don’t apply to my situation, I don’t think. I’m flying on United, and this particular time, Expedia issued me paper tickets for the flight. Many times on United before, I have received e-tickets. (Thanks to ElvisL1ves too. Interesting, but yet this is a domestic flight.)
I will do that Google search, though, and report back if I turn up anything interesting.
