Your e-ticket number — don’t leave home without it.

by Janice Hough on March 22, 2010


It’s hard to believe that a few short years ago, many veteran travelers, given a choice, wouldn’t go to the airport without a paper ticket.

Now, there seldom is a choice. Most carriers have gone exclusively to e-tickets.

Many travelers, including some of my clients, have gotten so casual about it all now that they just print off an itinerary and go. Some don’t even do that, which results in the occasional phone call or email — “Now, which flight am I on again?”

But while paper tickets aren’t necessary anymore, bringing an e-ticket number to the airport doesn’t take that much time, especially considering the potential disasters that could be averted.

First, as simple as it seems, having an e-ticket number at least guarantees that the reservation has been ticketed.

In an email world, it’s easy to assume that any itinerary is confirmed, or to print off any of a few suggested itineraries as being the final one. Last weekend, a client mistakenly sent a preliminary schedule to his daughter’s boyfriend, even though they had decided to change to earlier flights, and had ticketed accordingly.

Unfortunately the young man thus showed up hours after his ticketed flight, and was told he had no reservation or ticket. After the plane left without him, he called his girlfriend who reached me at home, and I was able to get him on another flight for only a moderately higher charge. Had he showed the airline agent a ticket number, the airline would have been able to figure out the situation at checkin, and he might have made the flight he expected with no extra charge.

In other cases, simply the absence of an e-ticket number will at least tip off a traveler to the fact that they may not HAVE a ticket. That small fact is always something that is better to know before getting to the airport.

Sometimes too, weird computers glitches result in a reservation not pulling up at the airport. Titles as simple as Ms. or Mr. can run together with a name, Jr. is often an issue, and what seems like a minor mispelling can result in a reservation not showing up at checkin. With an e-ticket number, however the gate agent can generally find the booking.

The other common problem comes up when a ticket involves several different carriers, Again the ticket number will help the gate agent since the first three numbers of the ticket number will tell a gate agent which airline controls the ticket.

Between travel agents, online booking sites and companies such as “Virtually There” and “Viewtrip” (these last owned by two major reservations systems), finding a copy of an e-ticket or just the ticket number should be simple.

Considering the alternatives and hassles that might arise, knowing your ticket number could be the most valuable few minutes of a trip.

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Tagged as: airlines, airports, e-tickets

  • Naoyuki

    Please clarify…are you suggesting that we all show up with the “ticketing number,” which is a very long series of numbers, or the “confirmation code,” which consists of just 6 letters? I don’t remember but I thought that the ticketing number is not always available on the boarding pass, especially if we print it ourselves, but the confirmation code is usually clearly shown on the boarding pass.

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/leocha Charlie Leocha

    I’m sure Janice was referring to the ticket number. Yes, that long series of numbers.
    Only two weeks ago, my eticket was “lost” when I tried to return from Geneva to Boston on a BA/AA connection. Because I had my ticket numbers, the problem was solved by the ticketing desk and I could complete my check-in.
    Many times, the itinerary that is printed out includes the ticket number. It did in my case. Be sure to check.

  • dcta

    Honestly, all you need is the record locator – you don’t really need the entire ticket number.

  • Mike Grapkowski

    Having the entire ticket number has saved me on a couple of occasions. Once, my flight from Madison to Chicago was canceled and I took a bus to Chicago. With the later arrival in Chicago, I would have missed my original flight. American booked me on a flight on United from ORD-LAS so that I wouldn’t have to wait all day at O’Hare. The re-issued ticket was compromised somehow, but in presenting my original e-ticket number to the agent, she was able to locate the new associated ticket without further incident. On another occasion, I had made multiple changes to a flight to Tampa. Having my progression of ticket numbers allowed the agent for my return flight out of Ft. Myers to locate the correct ticket (it was not ‘in the system’ when I first went to the Delta counter to check in). I always print my e-ticket number(s) on a word document that also includes rental car confirmations, hotel confirmations, etc….

  • Jeff L

    Consider a service like TripIt (which is free for the basic version) which allows you to forward the entire confirmation email you get from booking and stores all the relevant data for easy access, even via mobile devices. Then you have every possible number you need.

  • AirlineEmployee

    dcta March 22, 2010 at 11:48 am
    Honestly, all you need is the record locator – you don’t really need the entire ticket number.

    —————————————–
    Wrong. If your travel agent or you booked on i.e., Delta website but you’re actually flying on Air France, your record locator is associated only with the booking carrier; not the carrier you are flying. You need the ticket number, i.e., 006-1234567890 (006) meaning the carrier code, in this case Delta. This code can be found by the carrier you are actually flying…. This happens a lot with codeshare, alliance partners (one ticketing for the other partner) – both get a piece of the pie.

  • Jennifer Deutsch

    In regards to not just needing your record locator, Janice points out that a record locator is not evidence that you actually have a ticket. Just a reservation. I have clients who ask me to put flights on hold for them and then never get back to me on whether or not they want me to ticket it. I always send them an itinerary and then tell them at what point they have to get back to me. They don’t always do that. I have informed them to make sure that they have that e-ticket number on their itinerary otherwise it is possible that the ticket was never issued.

  • Carrie Charney

    Good to know. I have always only taken my reservation # with me and I’ve never had a problem. Now, I will take my ticket # as well. Thank you!

  • http://leftcoastsportsbabe.com Janice Hough

    One more thing. Many airlines have cracked down on what they call “churning.” This is the practice of making one reservation several times, either because the airline has cancelled the original one for not being ticketed, or because the fare has expired on the original reservation because it wasn’t ticketed enough.

    Unfortunately, what the airlines call “churning’ – and will bill travel agents for doing, is often just an uncertain client. To avoid being billed (with what are called “debit memos.”), when a client asks that a reservation be reinstated, most agents have learned to start over with a new booking.

    So if you have an original locator, it might not be correct. Plus if you as a traveler have been changing your mind on flights, then those are the ones most likely to have fallen through the cracks so it’s even more important to know you have a ticket number. (Had one last week where an admin sent an itin to a client for possibly attending a board meeting, the client never responded, the admin figured they weren’t coming, and then we discovered somewhat last minute that he client had figured not responding meant she thought the flights were fine. It all worked out but had she just taken the locator to the airport she would have been told, no reservation and no ticket.)

  • Scott

    Exactly. (except for dcta)

    The ONE essential piece of backup information is your ticket number, assuming of course it is the most recent. (An “original” e-ticket number after being changed by a travel agent, for example, may be useless.)

    Your ticket number is ALWAYS a 13-digit number.

    I see customers arrive sometimes with reams of paper, yet they are missing that one crucial piece of information. They book online and print itineraries, but that is all. No purchase or ticket information.

    Most travelers still do not understand that there is a BIG difference between a “reservation” and a “ticket.” Generally, you need both to travel. Having only one is not good enough. Don’t know how many times I have seen people get extremely aggravated and upset, insisting they have a reservation. They may very well have that, but they are not going anywhere without a ticket to match.

    With the increase of online agencies and multi-carrier itineraries, reservation numbers — or record locators — (i.e. that confirmation cod of 6 letters or numbers) is increasingly useless as they are different from carrier to carrier. If you have an itinerary traveling on three airlines, there will be three distinct reservation codes. They are only useful if you book directly with the carrier, though that is assuming you have the correct one.

  • http://www.Tahiti3.com Paula Demmer

    Great advice Janice! It’s so easy to forget which variation got ticketed. And whether the record locator is for the airline, the codeshare or the agency record.

  • http://leftcoastsportsbabe.com Janice Hough

    Update. Just had a KLM passenger completely panic when she called Delta – now the surviving carrier and the Delta agent couldnt find the flight and said she had no tickets.. Apparently according to Delta the only way for them to see KLM flights booked earlier this year is to have the ticket numbers.

  • Pingback: Delta/Northwest/KLM: the lost reservations

  • sami ali

    thank you for the advice.
    there is one more thing.that when you have a ticket used partially. how you can get information about which sector is used?
    is there any website can get you this information?

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