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Tickets, Stubs Of Tickets

Why the long ticket stub?

In most cultures airlines take the body of the ticket and leave you to board with the ticket stub. I was trying to figure out why Sichuan Airlines does the opposite - keeping the stub and leaving the passenger with the body? Is it because as a newish airline they have more landing slots further away from the gates requiring bus transfer to the plane, (from experience) increasing the potential for passenger mix-ups and the larger ticket body is more suited as an additional check. It is possible to rip off part of the ticket body (the UI equivalent of a one way switch) and still retain the necessary information for boarding and seat allocation.

E-tickets particularly from low cost airlines such as Ryan Air have changed mainstream perception of what makes an (airline) ticket. What is essence of a ticket? How will this change as the tools to read and scan information digitally are in more and more hands?

Writing from Tokyo | December 23, 2005 | Permalink




Comments

Air China and Eastern Chinese airlines sometimes also only keep ticket stub. Thinking of other tickets, say movie tickets, park entry tickets, bisically they all give the body parts to people.

Think of electronic tickets, does it eventually replace the paper ticket? Maybe not, at least in the near future. People need get some physical thing to prove, and make them confortable, that they have paid already.

Posted by: Yanqing at December 30, 2005 1:18 AM