Disadvantages of paper tickets
 

Apologies for the double-post to anyone who is also in the Europe forum. My last 2 questions seem to have gone there. Maybe someone it trying to tell me where to go ...

Anyway, what are the disadvantages of having paper tickets, rather than e-tickets? The trip I tried to purchase on Orbitz only offered paper ones. Is it because I added features to the flight plans, or is this an Orbitz "thing"? How much will it slow us down, if we don't have e-tickets? Thanks.

Donna

Paper should be no biggie either way. Some agencies may charge you $5 or so for the joy of paper (postage etc.)

American has one MD80 flight daily between DFW AND LAS, leaving at 11:40 AM, returning at 1:30 or so. That will have 3 x 2 seating. Don't know about any other MD 80 equipment flying that route. Any 737s with 3 x 2 will probably have it in the front only, hence more $. Figure a 20% reduction in revenue seat miles.

The only disadvantage I see is that you cannot lose the paper ticket! I lost one once and thought, no big deal, I'll just get the ticket reprinted. No, it turned out that I had to buy a brand new ticket! Of course this was on TACA Airlines and they are not exactly customer friendly...

Gardyloo: Thanks for answering both of my questions. Actually, I found ONE set of flights on AirTran on a 717 for the same price as AA. Flight time (and times) are basically the same. Just trying to figure out any reason not to choose AirTran. The only disadvantage I can think of is if we missed our flight ...

Donna

If you have e-tickets, you can sometimes avoid the long lines by checking in at a computer.

You will probably have 2-4&quot; more legroom on the American MD80 (the 717 is Boeing's clumsy re-naming of the same plane AA flies) compared to Air Tran. Both ways. Note this is <i>not</i> the case if you ride one of AA's 757s, where their excellent MRTC (more room in coach) program has been ditched in favor of LRTC. (Although I suppose it could be called &quot;more revenue through crushing&quot; so they could still call it MRTC.)

That of course should be &quot;more room <i>throughout</i> coach.&quot; Also FWIW, AA's frequent flier program is one of the best.

Sometimes they're an advantage. I recently had a flight that was delayed 30 minutes. Since I knew I only had 40 minutes to catch my connecting flight...this 30 minute delay would cause me to miss the connection.

Airlines are required to find you other routing if you are going to miss your connection. The US Air counters were crowded, so I just got on the phone to USAir and told them the situation. They verified it, found me a ticket on Delta instead (nonstop!), and told me I'd have to go up to the USAIR counter and get a paper ticket first, to exchange at Delta.
Since I already had a paper ticket, it saved me a 30 min wait online and I just proceeded over to Delta. However, if I'd held an eticket...waiting in line at USAIR might have made me miss that Delta flight.