First Automated Canadian Airline Ticket by Mike Nash, Prince George, British Columbia – October 2021
Below is an image of the first trial automated Canadian airline ticket that I printed nearly half a century ago in February 1974 while testing Air Canada’s new ticket printing computer software.
The ticket stock came from the now long defunct U.S. carrier, Braniff, as we hadn’t yet reached the stage of having our own and Braniff was kind enough to let us have a box of theirs. Braniff and United Airlines were the only other carriers working on automated ticket printing at the time and I had earlier visited each of them in Dallas and Denver respectively to compare notes. In the years before deregulation, airlines were more disposed to share technology ideas.
Airline tickets 50 years ago were incredibly labour intensive to price and write by hand, especially for overseas or complex travel itineraries. This was amply demonstrated within a month or so of going live when an early-implementation glitch with the new system caused a near riot during the morning rush hour at Dorval airport. Within just a few short weeks, ticket counter agents had forgotten enough about calculating and hand-writing tickets, plus sufficient numbers of staff had already been reassigned, to create huge lineups and missed or delayed flights.
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