How to check an electronic plane ticket

Today you can buy a plane ticket from the comfort of your home or office. In this case, the ticket is only an electronic confirmation of the contract between the passenger and the air carrier about the flight. At the same time, in order to get on the flight, it is not even necessary to print the document, it is enough to present your passport. Therefore, many are very worried using this booking method: the money has been debited from the card, but the ticket, in its usual form, is not on hand. What if you cheated?

What is E-ticket

An electronic ticket (E-ticket) is essentially just an electronic record on the server of the air carrier that operates the flight. The record contains the passenger's personal and passport data, the flight number for which he is registered, the place and airport of departure and arrival, the time of the start of the flight and its end.

The last thing to worry about is that the ticket might go missing. This information is stored in the airline's database for a long time, and the probability of losing your reservation is zero. Even a computer failure will not be able to affect this, since the data is duplicated in the archive, and it is easy to recover.

And the payment happens almost simultaneously. The buyer receives an e-mail confirmation in the form of an itinerary receipt, which is evidence that the ticket has indeed been purchased.

If the itinerary receipt has not been received, you can view it by opening your personal account on the booking website.

And it is better to print the receipt, the document may be needed at passport control to confirm the availability of a return ticket when flying abroad.

In addition, the printed electronic document will not let you forget the flight number and departure time.

The receipt also contains all the necessary information about the upcoming flight, which can be checked so as not to worry.

It is important! The legality of the document is confirmed by the booking code - a cipher consisting of six characters (letters and numbers).

Video - E-ticket - electronic ticket

How to check E-ticket

First of all, you need to check immediately after payment and receipt of the check. It is necessary to pay attention to the presence of the passenger's name, booking code and flight number in the check.

It is important to make sure that the e-ticket contains the confirmation of payment or booking.

But even this can not always relieve passengers of anxiety, so there are three ways to double-check that the flight booking is indeed confirmed:

use the check service on the airline's website;
call the airline and check the availability of a reservation through the operator;
track the status of the ticket on the website of the booking system.

On the carrier's website

To make sure that you have a reservation, you need to go to the website of the company that operates the flight and enter the necessary data for verification.

Almost all major airlines and agents today have booking verification services.

To do this, you need to know the booking code, the passenger's surname and the ticket number. Some sites also offer to enter an email address to which the response will be sent.

As a rule, you just need to indicate the cipher code of the reservation, as well as the surname (in Latin letters), so that the system confirms the information about the reservation.

Algorithm of action on the example of the Aeroflot website:

If you purchased your ticket from a reseller website, for example, One Two Trip:

First, let's check the data in the itinerary receipt, for this we go to the Personal Account and open the “My Orders” tab in the top drop-down menu, or open the e-ticket that was sent to the e-mail box.
The ticket status must contain the following information: “Confirmed”. If this is not enough to remove all doubts, we look at who makes the flight and write down the booking number.
Next, go to the airline's website and check the booking confirmation by entering the required data.

If you have only the ticket number, and for some reason you cannot provide the rest of the data, you can check the ticket only on the carrier's website, some of them provide such an opportunity.

Note! In cases where the booking was not made directly with the carrier, but through intermediaries, then information about the ticket during verification may be missing or the status of the ticket may be indicated incorrectly. In this case, you need to use other verification methods.

Video - How to check a purchased ticket for authenticity

Call an airline or agency

Checking an electronic ticket through a call to the phone number indicated on the site quickly removes all doubts, since the living word is often believed more than confirmation via the Internet.

If there was a failure when paying for a ticket, and you cannot be sure that the payment was made, the safest way is to clarify the information about the reservation with the airline or agency through which the ticket was issued by calling the hotline.

It is better to call even if you did not find booking data on the carrier's website, or if there is no confirmation mark in the document status.

To check, you need to give the operator's surname and booking code (booking number). After which he will either confirm or deny the presence of the reservation. Almost all major airlines and agents provide a free hotline call.

Through booking services (GDS)

As a rule, intermediaries who sell plane tickets do not connect to airlines, but to booking systems.

On the Russian market, the largest GDS (Global Distribution System) that deal with booking services are Amadeus, Gabriel, Russian Sirena, Saber and Galileo.

Budget small companies and Low Cost carriers quite recently booked tickets for their flights themselves, but recently they began to attract additional sources to get customers and began to conclude agreements with GDS: they offer their resources to the systems, and they, in turn, offer them. flights to agencies.

Company	Image	Description
		The most popular GDS used by travel agencies around the world to book flights, hotels, transfers, rail travel, and travel by river transport
		Provides users with information on the availability of seats, according to the rules of carriers, prices and timetables, and also provides reliable tourist information
		The most popular system for booking flights, hotels, cars and travel services. This system has the largest number of Low Cost international airlines.
		The company is engaged in booking passenger services and manages the availability of seats
Sirena Travel		Russian development - a system for booking plane tickets

The booking system through intermediaries is that they sell tickets, receiving a commission from GDS. When buying a travel document on the intermediary's website, the passenger also receives a reservation code in the system.

It is important! To check information about an e-ticket, you must enter not the airline's booking code, but the GDS booking code and the passenger's surname as indicated in the e-ticket.

Most often, the system reservation code is indicated on the ticket, but if it is not possible to determine through which resource the reservation was made, it is better to call the company and check this information with the operator.

Having learned the code and the system through which the reservation was made, we open the website of this system.

Here, immediately on the main page, a window for checking the flight opens.
You must enter the code and surname in Latin letters.

The second way is to check all booking systems, there are not so many of them, and therefore it can be done quickly.

When checking, it is important to pay attention to the "Confirmed" status, only this mark indicates that the global booking system has confirmed the issuance of a ticket for a specific passenger.

Status "Confirmed"

How to protect yourself from fraud

You can protect yourself from cheating when paying for an air ticket only by using the services of trusted agencies or by booking tickets directly on the airline's website.

It is best to choose flights on search engine sites, which have a very convenient selection system. It reflects all possible flights of various carriers and agents, the offers of which can be compared, and the most suitable flight option can be chosen.

It is important to understand that the search engines themselves do not make a reservation, they only show all possible flight options, and then redirect them to the websites of intermediaries or carrier companies. Therefore, using the metasearch system, it is convenient to get acquainted with the offers, choose the most suitable flight by price, duration, connections and departure time from airlines or agents, and complete the booking itself on the websites.

It is better not to purchase tickets on agency websites that are not present in the metasearch on search engine sites. If they work without the involvement of search engines, it is very difficult to confirm their reliability.

It is important! When faced with cheating, the first thing to do is contact the police and go to the bank to return the payment. Banks usually try in such cases to help return the money to the client and also join in the investigation of the fact of fraud.

Video - Electronic tickets

When a ticket is more expensive from carriers than from agents

It often happens that the cost of tickets for the same flight is higher, while the agents offer lower prices.

This is understandable: agents reduce the price due to a large commission from booking systems or airlines, the amount of which often depends on the sales volume of a particular agency.

This is a good marketing ploy to attract customers. Often, agents sacrifice their profits to attract more buyers.

There is no reason to worry if this is a trusted agency that is listed in the metasearch engine, as a rule, only reliable companies can afford it.

If an error is found during the check

Even the most pedantic people are not immune to errors when entering data during booking. There are misprints in the spelling of passport and personal data.

If an inaccuracy is found, it will be correct to immediately call the airline's hotline number and clarify what to do in this situation.

Possible solutions to the issue:

The airline makes changes to the electronic ticket, but the passenger has to pay a fine for reissuing it.
The error is corrected by airline employees without any penalties.
The airline turns a blind eye to data errors, and the passenger is allowed on the flight without amending the ticket.