Cash-strapped airline to issue only e-tickets for domestic travel DALLAS (AP) ? Stiff fees by American Airlines for passengers using paper tickets are designed to shift passengers to use the less costly of electronic ticketing, officials say. The cash-strapped airline will charge $50 for a paper ticket starting immediately, up from $25. Officials say the higher fee is designed to "increase the incentive" to use e-tickets. "It's beyond the point where they will or will not accept e-tickets; they have to," David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association in Washington, D.C., told The Dallas Morning News in Friday's online edition. "People aren't really being given a choice ? not with the big fees that airlines are putting on paper tickets." The world's largest air carrier, which averted bankruptcy late last month when key unions agreed to economic givebacks, said Thursday it will only issue electronic ticket versions for domestic travel and soon will do the same for international flights. It costs millions of dollars for paper tickets in printing, auditing for accuracy and mailing. They must be collected at gates, sent back to the airline and processed again, with a risk of loss along the way, Stempler said. The airline lost $1.04 billion in the first quarter and was in the final steps of cutting $4 billion a year from its costs. Airline officials declined to say how much it would save from dropping paper tickets. But it's a move being followed by other major airlines hoping to cut costs. "I can tell you that the savings and savings potential are substantial," said American spokesman Tim Kincaid. New rules mean all domestic trips are eligible for e-tickets and American's own reservations systems won't be able to issue paper versions. The airline plans to eliminate nearly all paper ticket transactions by year's end, although passengers will still be able to get them through a travel agent for a fee. Passengers eventually will be unable to purchase paper tickets even through a travel agent because American will no longer be able to process them. The airline aims to have e-ticket-only travel for international trips with American's partner airlines by early 2004, and the airline has pushed back a 100 percent paperless ticketing goal to the end of 2004 from the end of this year. One advantage of paper tickets is that they can be redeemed at other airlines' counters, while e-tickets needed to be converted into paper documents, which meant long waits in lines. But American and other carriers have addressed that concern by signing agreements to recognize each other's e-tickets. American has such "interlining" deals with 10 major airlines, officials say. Now, 84 percent of American's passengers fly using electronic tickets, up from 65 percent only one year ago. Some wonder about priorities of American, which has been lost millions of dollars daily and had to borrow to meet payroll. "Paper tickets are not American Airlines' biggest problem right now," said Terry Trippler, a travel consultant in Minneapolis who also writes for a Web site called Cheapseats.com. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.pscutt.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************