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When you get your airline
ticket from your travel agent or from the
airline, it will look like a booklet with long,
narrow leaves printed on heavy stock paper.
Each of these cards is
devoted to one flight segment of your trip. The
last card is your receipt. The receipt is what
you would, typically, give to your employer if
you are traveling on an expense account. There
might be additional pages devoted to
advertising, or legalese fine print
When you get your ticket,
you should check to see there is one card for
each flight segment. This card is your boarding
pass, which you will need to present to get on
the plane. The form of the boarding pass varies
from airline to airline, but a common method is
to print it on a card perforated about two
inches from the end.
As the passengers are
standing in line waiting to get on the airplane,
there is an airline employee at the gate door
who detaches the main part of the boarding pass
from each passenger's ticket and keeps it. You
will be left with the small stub. Keep it; it's
important.
In some cases the ticket
will not have the boarding pass, even for
domestic flights. If for some reason (a) the
system cannot pre-reserve a seat, or (b) exit
row seating was requested, or, (c) in the case
of tickets bought more than one month prior to
the flight, the airline will not issue a
boarding pass that far in advance (true with
most airlines), the stub that would be the
boarding pass will have a notation such as
"CHECK IN REQUIRED". The traveler
should look for this notation, and if it is
found, the traveler should check in at the
podium to have a boarding
pass issued. If multiple segments have
"CHECK IN REQUIRED", all the boarding
passes should be able to be issued at the same
time at the first check-in point - unless the
flight load for one or more segments is
particularly heavy and seat assignments are not
being given out for them. The traveler is
advised to get to the airport at least 45
minutes to an hour prior to departure time to
take care of this - not necessarily because it
takes that long, but in the event of a heavily
booked flight, getting there early increases the
chance of being able to get a seat.
Inexperienced travelers
should also be made aware that in some cases,
the boarding pass is a
separate ticket-like item that may be stapled to
the actual ticket. This is the case when the
boarding pass, for whatever reason, was not or
could not be issued when the ticket was printed.
It is always advisable to do
so, for two reasons: (a) the gate agent (or
ticket counter agent) will enter into the
computer that you have showed up for the flight,
as opposed to being flagged simply as having a
pre-issued boarding pass ... this reduces the
likelihood of losing your seat, and (b) many
airlines can collect the passenger tickets at
the podium, in which case the boarding pass is
stamped with a validation stamp and returned to
the passenger. This decreases the amount of time
it takes to board all the passengers for the
flight. The more tickets that are taken at the
podium, the less the overall slow-down at the
boarding point as the boarding agent has to rip
off boarding passes of people getting on the
aircraft.
First, you will refer to
your boarding pass stub to see what seat you are
assigned to. There are exceptions, but most of
the time you are not permitted to just grab any
seat on the airplane. The number of your
assigned seat is printed on the boarding pass
stub.
If you are flying on an
international flight, or a very long domestic
flight, there may be smoking and non-smoking
sections on the plane. Your boarding pass will
show what section you requested when you bought
your ticket. If your boarding pass says "No
Smoking" and you end up seated in the
Smoking section, all you need to do is request a
seat change. Legally, they must accommodate all
non-smoking passengers in non-smoking areas. The
boarding pass is "proof" that you
originally requested non-smoking. The opposite
hold true if you are a smoker.
Your boarding pass stub is a
tracer that shows that you actually did fly on
that flight. If you are a member of a frequent
flyer program, and you are not credited with
miles for that flight on your statement, you
would then send a photocopy of your boarding
pass stub to the airline so they can correct
your account.
One last use: The boarding
pass stub is the traditional bookmark for
airline passengers everywhere. You'll look like
a real Frequent Flyer if you use the boarding
pass stub to mark your place in your book.
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