Comparison of plane vs train tickets and the pros/cons of each approach

[Sherby976]

Moderator note: Split from

Help! Fined for failure to collect physical ticket!

In late March I travelled to Manchester for a concert. I purchased my tickets online using trainline beforehand. My journey home was as follows; Deansgate - Preston (Lancs) Preston (Lancs) - Glasgow Central On my journey between Deansgate and Preston I was stopped by a ticket conductor...

www.railforums.co.uk

Try boarding a plane with confirmation of purchase and not your actual ticket.

 

[Watershed]

Try boarding a plane with confirmation of purchase and not your actual ticket.

With most decent airlines you only need to produce a form of ID to board - if you lose your boarding pass they'll print a new one for you at the gate. Under draft EU revisions to EU261 they'll be banned from charging any fee for that reprinting.

 

[Blaine]

Try boarding a plane with confirmation of purchase and not your actual ticket.

Indeed, never a problem - just the reference is fine, and if you don't have it, they'll happily look you up using your passort.

LNER can't (or won't?) print tickets either on board - sat behind a 20 year old last week, who was totally bemused that his tickets would be physical, he kept repeating that he would never have chosen that option so had no idea why he'd have to go to a ticket machine as he had never had to do it in his life (turned out he had a cross-London tube journey, hence he wasn't asked what delivery option he wanted and he missed the instruction). Definitely a generational gap!
The ticket inspector initially told him to ring LNER and ask if they could covert the tickets to e-tickets, later on he came back with a revenue person who took him off at York to collect the tickets. Hopefully they let him his use his Advance ticket on the next train.

 

[yorkie]

Try boarding a plane with confirmation of purchase and not your actual ticket.

That's normally fine; non-budget traditional airlines generally won't penalise someone for not having printed off their boarding pass.

However, it very much depends on the airline!

Train companies are more similar to Ryanair in terms of seeing customers as there to be penalised if at all possible.

By all means we can have a debate about how ticketing differs on airlines vs trains, but ultimately there are a lot of key differences between modes, and also within each mode. For example, a short hop on a local Scotrail train in Strathclyde, has more in common with a bus journey than a plane journey, while an Edinburgh to London run on 1st class on LNER has more in common with travelling on British Airways in business class than hopping on a bus.