Booking vs Ticketing

[Aus ATC]

Hi there,

After reading a thread regarding delayed ticketing of a "confirmed booking" - which subsequently went bad for the OP, it got me wondering - why is does there still seem to be a disconnect between making a booking (whether via an airline website, or 3rd party agency), when clearly seat availability, pricing etc, is constantly updated, and the issuing of the associated e-ticket (the key bit being the "e")?

It just seems incongruous in this day and age that a human has to intervene somewhere in the process to change a booking into a ticket.

I can understand it if the booking is not paid for at the time, but in a lot of cases money and/or points are exchanged at the time of the booking.

Any insider information, as to why this occurs, would be appreciated.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

Very rarely does a human get involved in ticketing these days. It is usually queued for a ticketing robot which does it. The problem with a robot is that if anything isn't standard about the ticket or strange codes are left on the booking, the robot will fail to ticket and queue it for manual processing.
QF's processing of manual tickets seems to be a bit hit and miss, and they aren't interested in doing it unless your flight is soon.
I have had tickets issue in seconds, then others take months.
A booking and a ticket will always be separate, although some LCC platforms I believe combine these. You can make a booking and hold a seat until the ticketing time limit is reached. This is handy to grab inventory but pay for it later.

 

[Mattg]

As has been mentioned, the delay is when manual processing is required. When this occurs, QF prioritises bookings in the near future, so other bookings may take weeks or even months to be ticketed.

This delay often seems to occur when redeeming a residual voucher (i.e. a voucher that incorporates the leftover balance of another voucher) or when making a change to an existing booking. In the case that I think the OP is referring to, I believe the delay was due to the fact the person was adding flights to an existing booking.

 

[williamsf1]

From a travel agent side .. a lot of fares will have a special extended ticketing time limit … this varies between fare types and contracts.

Large travel agent chains agents have monthly targets, and some play the game where they may have met this month’s target, but next month is looking soft, so they will hold off on processing the tickets until next month to hit the sales target. This can come with some risks as airlines can increase fares / schedule change / or cancel PNRs due to no ticket.