Electronic Idiocy

[ChrisGreaves]

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If you’ve not bought an airline ticket lately, I’ve got news for you. The little booklet with pink, blue, and primrose too, also an unreadable fifth carbon copy (orange) at the back, is gone.

It has been replaced with an Electronic Ticket, as shown above.

What does this mean to the consumer?

Well, besides the plastic wallet with the business card and the colorful 8-panel pamphlet recommending that you get Travel Insurance and the Travel Insurance Policy – a 48-page mini-booklet with a whole lot of legalese which **I** will not get around to reading since the flight is only 7½ hours, and a 4-sheet Invoice/Statement, and a 1-page Confirmation of Insurance Coverage, and a different 2-sheet Invoice/Statement, and a 1-sheet Enquiry Details, you also get a 4-sheet e-Ticket, which arrives by email at the Travel Agent’s desk, but must be printed out as hard-copy so that you have something to show when you reach the check-in counter.

When you want to fly up above the clouds you can’t just wave your hand and say “My ticket to the clouds is up there in the cloud”; you HAVE to chop down a tree and use Chlorine.

The first sheet holds useful stuff in about 1/8 of its body – you can see the left-most sheet in the photo above the stuff is surrounded by solid lines and says, in essence, that I’m going there and then coming back a short time later. The first sheet also holds the text “This document must be presented along with ...” just in case you thought you could leave it locked in your bank vault.

The second sheet contains the text “from 9:00a.m. to 4:00p.m. (Sunday closed), at 514-987-9582 or 1-800-505-9655 (outside Montreal)” which tells us that the document printing macro isn’t smart enough to reduce the font on the previous sheet by a half-a-point. Or better yet, increase the font on both pages by a factor of 1.9 so that the two sheets are readable when we run into turbulence.

The third sheet contains Information. It says so in that shaded area right at the top. I’ll give you the gist of it: “We are not responsible once we have taken your money”. Gee! I never would have guessed that in a million passenger-miles. Also I learn that they use justified text.

The fourth sheet tells me that I can make my flight more enjoyable by parking my car (which I no longer have) BEFORE I get on board the plane. Things they don’t teach you at University, eh?

(I just panicked and weighed the literature: six ounces! I was afraid it would tip my hand-baggage over the 10Kg limit, but I still have about 2.8 Kg in reserve).

So what’s the deal with electronics? Why not store EVERYTHING in the cloud? There can’t be too many Chris Greaves(s) flying out of Toronto at midnight, with a driver’s license that shows Grenville Street as a home address. And even if there was it ought to be easy for someone like me (see “University” above) to counter with “Oh No! I’m not the Chris Greaves from Grenville Street who is on the 11:55 p.m. flight to the North Pole; I’m the Chris Greaves from Grenville Street who is on the 11:55 p.m. flight to Romantic Paris”. I don’t see a problem with that.

Also re the Insurance documents, why not, when the ‘plane is going down mid-Atlantic, press the buzzing-light thing and ask a stewardess to print out a hard copy and bring it, with an envelope, a stamp, and a ball-point pen back to your seat. It’s why we have stewardesses, isn’t it?

[viking33]

I agree completely Chris.

[Jay Freedman]

Interesting, but... I usually take a flight only once or twice a year, and I never get anything like that. Maybe it's because I book my own flights online (apologies to any readers trying to make a living as a travel agent!). I get a 2-page PDF file that I store until I get home and then delete. In the 24 hours before the flight, I download and print a 1-page boarding pass for each leg of the trip (usually I can't afford non-stop flights).

Now that I have a newfangled smartphone, I can put the boarding pass on the phone, which I'll wave over the boarding agent's barcode scanner, and save a couple of sheets of dead tree.

[Rudi]

I don't fuss too much with e-tickets and ticket printing. I book my seat over the phone, then when i arrive at the airport i check in my luggage and the person at the check-in counter issues me the narrow ticket with the perforated tear-off stub. Not too much paperwork at all.

[ChrisGreaves]

Interesting, but... I usually take a flight only once or twice a year, ...

Well, you can tell by my unfamiliarity that it's much longer than that since **I** have booked a ticket!
My 6oz package seems to stem from using an agent to book what was essentially a self-extended package tour. The term "package tour" should have given me a clue.

Maybe when I get my new-fangled smart phone, web-enabled, I'll try really cutting down on paper use.
A big part of the problem is, of course, that I was raised on paper (my family couldn't afford oatmeal) and still distrust its replacement.

I have to admit, however, that the new tap-and-go Navigo card is a big improvement on the old Carte-d'Orange for public transit in Paris.

[ChrisGreaves]

I don't fuss too much with e-tickets and ticket printing. I book my seat over the phone, then when i arrive at the airport i check in my luggage and the person at the check-in counter issues me the narrow ticket with the perforated tear-off stub. Not too much paperwork at all.

I might try this next year; skip the travel agent, book by phone.
I don't check in luggage anymore, just my orange shoulder-bag.

Re the narrow ticket with the perforated tear-off stub Do we think it is the same size as the dear old 80-coolumn punched-cards?