But those two incidents were rare among the thousands of trips made by 900 travel-eligible Blue Shield employees. Airlines' inability to hand off electronic ticketing reservations to each other. The nation's top two carriers, American and United airlines, had planned to share e-ticketing by this summer. Now it won't happen until at least next year at the earliest. Largely, it's a matter of timing.
Airlines hesitate to unveil a complicated new system during the peak summer travel season.
For now, American is content to have rolled out its deal with Canadian, which was challenging enough. Issues between the carriers include how to make different computer systems work together, and how much of a peek another airline should be allowed at a rivals' bookings. Accounting procedures for paperless transactions are still being worked out. Airlines want to encourage more e-ticketing because it saves them money. The industry is banking that more agreements like American's and Canadian's will encourage more passengers to try going ticketless.