Anyone remember when airlines had "city ticket offices"?

[y_p_w]

Obviously the need for them is less with online purchasing, online travel agents, and e-ticketing. But I remember them well.

A relative of mine was a travel agent and he would often visit them to handle special requests or pick up tickets that for one reason he couldn't pick up himself. Some used to be in prime locations. For whatever reason I remember China Airlines (Taiwan) had one at a corner location at Union Square in San Francisco that's now a Starbucks. I also remember this relative arranged for some buddy passes on Air New Zealand from an ANZ employee that we used to fly to Australia. It was a reward for selling a lot of tickets. It was weird too because ANZ didn't fly out of SFO but they had a ticket office in San Francisco and we flew out of LAX.

A friend of mine had to rebook a United flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and the change fee was paid for and the receipt collected at United's ticket office in Shanghai.

There was one at Penn Station in New York City. I understand it was from United's partnership with Amtrak, which has since dissolved. I heard it was the last city ticket office United had.

 

[John105]

Not really, but had an aunt who worked for an airline in Manhattan whose office closed maybe 2009. They gave everything away and we got 6 Herman Miller Eames chairs that were stamped 1982 which I thinks indicates when mfg'd. The interesting thing about them is on eBay they seem to be $1000+ each? My wife wanted to throw them away and I said no, have never used them and they're in the basement. It seems every office, including mine built 2009, has knock offs of this design, but we have the real ones. Website says $2,595 new today. Seems a bit extreme

Eames Aluminum Group Chairs

The Eames aluminum executive chair sits equally well in all kinds of home and workplace interiors, a statement of enduring design excellence.

www.hermanmiller.com

 

[Kira]

Airlines had street level offices along 5th Avenue in NYC.
I saw a "square inch" ad in the Times for real inexpensive airline tickets at a ticket brokerage on W. 14th St.
Agents working phones with headsets were crammed into a small office. The hallway was stacked with outgoing mail....all of it tickets.
These folk had no travel brochures. I bought a ticket to Australia on Korean Air.
I spoke my request face to face to a fellow who touch-typed my info, took my CC# and handed me my tickets.
Then I walked up 5th Ave, to the Korean Air office and checked to see if I was in their system.
The rep hit a wall and called for assistance as he needed the code of the broker I used.
"Ahhhh, R&L Travel.....#367", his superior said.
I was there. I was surprised I couldn't select my seat! I imagine they had to allow for equipment changes. Ha-ha.
I was told by everybody that was a smart thing to do.


Quality office furniture is eye-poppingly dear.
My roomie's brother sold for Steel Case (sp?).
$600 was the best he could do on a stout, heavy office chair for his own brother!....50 years ago!

 

[mk378]

Office chairs are important. An office worker will spend a lot of time there, more than in their car.

 

[c502cid]

United had one in the South Denver Metro. When it closed it became "United Hair and Nails". The sign on the building still has the United Font. It has to be closed over 15 years or more now.

 

[Astro14]

United once had ticket offices in many cities. So helpful in the days of paper tickets and arcane reservation systems. An employee newspaper. An employee credit union. But the airline shed over 50,000 jobs in bankruptcy- closing all those offices, shutting down the newspaper, spinning off the credit union. The confluence of extreme cost pressure, and the change in the nature of ticketing, caused the closure.

If you look at what can be done with the app, right now, it’s amazing. Much of the functionality of a ticket office is on your phone and available on the app.

Book. Flight updates. Gate change notifications. Rebooking options calculated for you. Advance warnings* of bad weather and potential delays. Change seats. Upgrade seats. Check bags. Pre-order food. Change flights. Real time bag tracking. Airport maps that include directions to your connecting gate. Much more than I’ve listed here.

Simply amazing.

Those clutching paper tickets are still looking for a ticket office and a person to help them, but the reality of technology, and travel, is that it’s been placed in the palm of their hand.

The passenger has been empowered with more information than the city ticket offices once had.


*Flew ORF-DEN last Thursday. Major snowstorm hit Denver Thursday. Started getting warnings about weather, and rebooking options, via the United app on Tuesday. Checked bags. Could see where my bags were (all properly loaded).

Ultimately, we departed ORF five minutes early. Landed DIA ten minutes early. But the app was tracking the bad weather and offering me options 48 hours out.

 

[John105]

I did have a paper ticket purchased through a broker when I went to Sweden in 1997, and I flew out of JFK. It was a lot more mysterious and difficult to get the right dates and times, unlike today. The broker FedEx’d the tix from Manhattan and I’m sure the charges were included in the price. I specifically recall around this time I looked at job ads on paper, in a magazine that literally clipped real ads and printed their images. One of those cos also FedEx’d me airline tix to Austin TX, and a rental car contract for the interview…

I fact checked myself and the Herman Miller chairs have a label 090187 so 1987 vintage. Also I meant my office opened 2019 and has knock offs. My coworker and I went in one of the conference rooms and they are poor knockoffs. The seat and arm rests are close but the bases are not, spokes are too fat….

 

[Snagglefoot]

When travelling through SE Asia in 1986 I came across “Bucket Shops” that had discount tickets for sale. I was planning on flying from Hong Kong to Bangkok but for an extra $50 I could add the Philippines. I spent Christmas in the Philippines and New Years in Bangkok.

 

[y_p_w]

Earlier I meant that my travel agent relative sometimes couldn’t issue tickets himself and would need to go to an airline office to pick them up. But I remember all those red carbon forms. Some were from ARC, but there was a predecessor before them. I even remember seeing handwritten tickets, but with a credit card style imprinter and these little dies with airline logos. These are just the receipts, but I remember these forms where the “coupon” sheets highlighted each segment.

 

[97prizm]

United had one in the South Denver Metro. When it closed it became "United Hair and Nails". The sign on the building still has the United Font. It has to be closed over 15 years or more now.

Whete was that, out near the old Stapleton Airport? Which by the way the tower was converted to a brewery.

 

[c502cid]

Arapahoe and Yosemite in Centennial.

 

[y_p_w]

Arapahoe and Yosemite in Centennial.

View attachment 209362

Ah. From the pre Continental merger United logo where the U and A were slightly taller.

 

[John105]

Ah. From the pre Continental merger United logo where the U and A were slightly taller.

When I was a little kid around 5, I asked my dad how come the flag is backwards on airplanes and buses. He explained that the field should be forward and I began to draw the flag on aircraft and buses as such.

Sometimes when I look back, I think I was a smart kid. Not sure how we get dumb as we get older!

 

[andrewg]

United once had ticket offices in many cities. So helpful in the days of paper tickets and arcane reservation systems. An employee newspaper. An employee credit union. But the airline shed over 50,000 jobs in bankruptcy- closing all those offices, shutting down the newspaper, spinning off the credit union. The confluence of extreme cost pressure, and the change in the nature of ticketing, caused the closure.

If you look at what can be done with the app, right now, it’s amazing. Much of the functionality of a ticket office is on your phone and available on the app.

Book. Flight updates. Gate change notifications. Rebooking options calculated for you. Advance warnings* of bad weather and potential delays. Change seats. Upgrade seats. Check bags. Pre-order food. Change flights. Real time bag tracking. Airport maps that include directions to your connecting gate. Much more than I’ve listed here.

Simply amazing.

Those clutching paper tickets are still looking for a ticket office and a person to help them, but the reality of technology, and travel, is that it’s been placed in the palm of their hand.

The passenger has been empowered with more information than the city ticket offices once had.


*Flew ORF-DEN last Thursday. Major snowstorm hit Denver Thursday. Started getting warnings about weather, and rebooking options, via the United app on Tuesday. Checked bags. Could see where my bags were (all properly loaded).

Ultimately, we departed ORF five minutes early. Landed DIA ten minutes early. But the app was tracking the bad weather and offering me options 48 hours out.

I'd rather be "clutching" my paper boarding pass and be assisted by real people, thanks.

 

[y_p_w]

I'd rather be "clutching" my paper boarding pass and be assisted by real people, thanks.

That’s still all available at airports. But there aren’t really any of the traditional “paper tickets” where losing one meant having to pay for a replacement. No thanks to that. I like electronic ticketing, not having to check in at an airport, and being able to look up my confirmation number to use to check in and obtain a boarding pass.

I do like to have a paper printout of some kind as a backup for my mobile devices.

 

[andrewg]

That’s still all available at airports. But there aren’t really any of the traditional “paper tickets” where losing one meant having to pay for a replacement. No thanks to that. I like electronic ticketing, not having to check in at an airport, and being able to look up my confirmation number to use to check in and obtain a boarding pass.

I do like to have a paper printout of some kind as a backup for my mobile devices.

I have no problem doing the booking and seat choices online. Where I take issue is that I like paper boarding passes and kiosks as well as having a real human being deal with my luggage. It's a service and I enjoy it. Seems like the airlines want to leave virtually everything up to the traveler with no reduction in airfare. Using a smartphone for literally everything these days is the very definition of "clutching" (a smartphone that is).

 

[y_p_w]

I have no problem doing the booking and seat choices online. Where I take issue is that I like paper boarding passes and kiosks as well as having a real human being deal with my luggage. It's a service and I enjoy it. Seems like the airlines want to leave virtually everything up to the traveler with no reduction in airfare. Using a smartphone for literally everything these days is the very definition of "clutching" (a smartphone that is).

Sure. Having something on a piece of paper is useful, at least as a backup. I don’t worry so much about my devices being short on charge, but a borked phone or tablet can make for a pretty bad day. On trips I tend to at least create a single page itinerary with all my airline, hotel, and rental car confirmation numbers, although I separately print up each confirmation to out in an envelope.

I was also referring to the older style tickets that couldn’t be replaced when lost. I saw clips from the A&E series Airline where there were a lot of passengers who managed to lose their “paper tickets” and were forced to purchase new tickets. Like this where a passenger dropped his ticket but blamed it on the airline. They later found it on the ground, but gave him an exception since a previous customer service agent saw the ticket. That scene ended with the agent being given the ticket and she runs into the plane to show that he’d dropped it. There was another time where a mortified daughter (a Naval Academy Midshipman) sees her dad arguing over a lost ticket. He ends up paying for it, but it’s odd seeing it these days because it looks like he’s writing a personal check.

 

[Astro14]

I have no problem doing the booking and seat choices online. Where I take issue is that I like paper boarding passes and kiosks as well as having a real human being deal with my luggage. It's a service and I enjoy it. Seems like the airlines want to leave virtually everything up to the traveler with no reduction in airfare. Using a smartphone for literally everything these days is the very definition of "clutching" (a smartphone that is).

Actually, airfares are dramatically cheaper than they were in the days of city ticket offices.

Airlines have cut staff, and that has reduced some costs, just as others,
like labor, aircraft, fuel, and gate access have gone up - but the customer now has access to a great deal more information than the city ticket office ever did.

Real time updates. Self rebooking. Real time bag tracking. Flight tracking. Gate change updates. Weather updates. Information that was once proprietary is now shared.

You’ve been granted access to an incredible array of information.

None of that is available to you on paper.

Your choice to remain in the dark. Even my 85 year old mother books, tracks her flight, checks in on line, navigates to the gate, shares her flight, via the app on her iPhone.

Welcome to the Information Age.

 

[fdcg27]

There was a time fifty or so years ago when you could book a flight by calling the airline on the phone and then paying for it, with a personal check, at the airport when you showed up for the flight. Airlines published system timetables which were given out at the check-in desk and those listed flights with equipment used and fares.
Then came the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Maybe twenty years later, a networked world brought the advent of e-tickets followed some years later with the near death of any paper tickets.
There were a number of start-ups in the early days of deregulation, People Express being a large example. The legacy carriers couldn't match their fares, or maybe they could. Bob Crandall's American Airlines originated the concept of yield management which did allow them to offer at least a few seats on competing flights that matched the fares offered by the start-ups, which had the outcome of killing off the rather poorly run start-up carriers, who also had nothing like the IT infrastructure to support any sort of yield management. After all, this was an era in which most flights went out with lots of empty seats, so getting some money for an otherwise unused seat was gravy.
My how things have changed and we now have the cheapest fares on a constant dollar basis that we've ever seen as well as some of the highest load factors and everyone searches for flights online and books there as well.

 

[y_p_w]

There was a time fifty or so years ago when you could book a flight by calling the airline on the phone and then paying for it, with a personal check, at the airport when you showed up for the flight. Airlines published system timetables which were given out at the check-in desk and those listed flights with equipment used and fares.

I remember a lot of those timetables with my relative working in a travel agent office.

But I picked up a paper ticket once at the airport ticket counter. And they were rightly called ticket counters back then since they probably sold or issued a lot of tickets at the airport. The reservation was made by a company I was interviewing on the east coast. I suppose I could have picked it up at a ticket office too. The important thing for me was to not lose the return ticket. Not a problem these days with electronic ticketing, but back then it was crazy when they were lost.

I did see this interesting piece. It does mention the possibility of a lost ticket fee where one could be reissued.

What is a United Airlines forever ticket?

What is a United Airlines infinity ticket? And does this reader have one -- or is she out of luck? Let's find out.

www.elliott.org

• Back in the day of paper tickets, a ticket could be declared “lost.” An airline would reissue them with an affidavit and a lost ticket fee of around $75. But she doesn’t have any of that paperwork.

They show the requestors original paper ticket issued in 2000 by a travel agent. It was thermal printed ARC ticket stock. FYI - the policy of this website is that nobody can make an anonymous request for help, so info provided to website is considered public.

I found something else saying that some airlines had a lost ticket application form where someone paid the replacement fee, but would then get a refund on it if the ticket wasn't used past a certain date.