Benefit

E-Tickets Advantages

E-ticketing system offers many advantages for both travelers and airlines, including security, flexibility, cost and convenience. At the mean time, it also provides the standard assurances of the traditional paper ticket, such as seating choice, travel time options and other flexibilities.

E-tickets are impossible to "lose" because they reside in a computer database network. For this reason, they are also hard to steal. Passengers typically print out copies of their e-ticket, including confirmation e-mails, itineraries and other documents. All those documents can be replaced by pulling them out of the computer again, and only the person with the proper identification can use the e-ticket. With the old paper tickets, passengers who lost or forgot them might be charged a fee for the airline to make new ones. In some cases, passengers were required to buy new tickets at full-price. E-tickets offer a distinct advantage in this area.

A passenger also may easily makes changes to their travel itinerary using an e-ticket. This is because of the travel agency or airline need only update their database with the requested changes rather than physically issuing a new ticket which incur expense. Dealing with e-tickets is less costly to airlines. The industry estimates a savings of $3 billion annually if it used e-tickets only. Therefore, this makes it possible for airlines to provide more competitive fares to passengers. The tickets also can be booked and processed in a more timely way, saving labor hours and cutting down on traveler frustration.

After the sale, airlines can more easily track down passengers to inform them of itinerary adjustments, cancellations and other last-minute changes. E-ticket passengers can receive everything from gate assignments to cancellation or delays through e-mail and text messaging sent to their cell phones or some portable devices that handle multiple communication tasks and data management, such as a...