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When an online travel agency says that the booking is confirmed, does that mean that the actual flight tickets have been booked? Or does that only mean that the travel agency confirms that the customer made some reservation with the travel agency and that now the travel agency will attempt to obtain the actual flight ticket (which may or may not be successful, e.g. it may fail if the travel agency realizes that the airline now issues flight tickets at a much higher price)?

Example with the online travel agency Booking.com:

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    That probably depends on the agency.
    – Henrik supports the community
    Commented Oct 22 at 9:22
  • Probably yes, but I do not have inside information. Note: travel agencies have better cancellation possibilities, essential e.g. if you are planing complex flights, with hotel, etc. They may get such temporary booking for one or few days until the plan is finished.
    – Giacomo Catenazzi
    Commented Oct 22 at 9:47
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    It depends but it's their problem, is it not? What's your actual practical problem?
    – Relaxed
    Commented Oct 22 at 9:54
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    @FranckDernoncourt You are sure you have a flight ticket when you have a ticket number and its status is "confirmed" or "OK" or "ticketed". Ticket numbers should be available somewhere either in a confirmation e-mail or on the OTA's website (alternatively they may provide the airline(s)'s PNR(s) which allow you to look up the information on each airline's website).
    – jcaron
    Commented Oct 22 at 10:50
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    Relaxed is correct. Airline can and do cancel or change flights all the time. In most (but not all) legislations you are entitled to a full cash refund which doesn’t stop the airlines aggressively pushing vouchers instead. You are only entitled to compensation if they cancel less then two weeks before departure and if you are covered under EU 261
    – Hilmar
    Commented Oct 22 at 14:18

3 Answers 3

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This depends on the website but it does go both ways, depending on you the backend systems are integrated with the OTA. When you see the Booking Confirmed message it means that either they have issued a ticket for you or the are holding onto the seats while upstream systems process the booking. There can be minutes to a few hours between the Booking Confirmed message and the issuance of the actual ticket.

In other words the Booking Confirmed message indicates that a flight ticket will be booked.

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    Except when it doesn't (I've had "booking confirmed" that was then cancelled and refunded an hour later)..
    – gerrit
    Commented Oct 23 at 7:31
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A flight booking, whether with a travel agency or directly with the airline, is usually confirmed and then ticketed. It's only at the latter stage that you actually have a ticket. Most of the time, ticketing happens almost immediately after confirmation, but problems with the booking systems can cause reservations to be ticketed at a delay or not at all. This is more likely to happen when using travel agencies (rather than booking directly with the airline), or when multiple airlines are involved.

The most secure way to make sure your reservation is properly ticketed is to query it in the reservation system of the airline. You should receive an email from the travel agency with a six-character confirmation number (the PNR, e.g. "A1B2C3") that you can enter on the airline's website to retrieve the booking. For instance, with United Airlines you could check the booking here: https://www.united.com/en/us/manageres/mytrips. Somewhere in the reservation shown on the airline website, you should find a 13-digit ticket number to confirm that a ticket has been issued. Sometimes this can be a bit more complicated, for example in the case of codeshares when the marketing airline is different from the operating one. In those cases you might have multiple PNRs for different airlines.

My advice would be that if you don't receive a PNR within 24 hours after the booking confirmation, or the PNR fails to find a reservation on the airline website, you contact the travel agency to find out if something is wrong. I have personally had it happen that a booking was confirmed but got stuck in the system and was never ticketed.

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There are actually two different concepts in most systems:

  • Bookings (aka reservations) which (more or less) say "Mr X is booked to travel in class Y on flight AB123 on the D/M/Y" [possibly with options such as seat number, meal preferences, extra services, etc.]. This just "reserves a spot" on the given flight.
  • Tickets which (more or less) say "Mr X has paid for travel in class Y between cities ABC and DEF", often with conditions (routing, eligible flights, dates, and all the rules associated with the fare). In some cases it's not actually paid (for corporate accounts and such), but it means the passenger is actually allowed to travel (but not necessarily on a specific flight).

Nowadays, in the majority of cases, when you "book a flight", especially online, the two are created (roughly) at the same time and they are very highly linked. But it's not always the case:

  • You can have a ticket without a booking. That's a so-called "open" ticket, which you can use on any flight allowed by the ticket. Of course, that only works for flexible fares (mostly the famous "Y" class). I'm not sure any OTA or airline website allows that, you would usually need to use the services of a traditional TA or call the airline (or visit one of their offices/sales desks!) to buy one.
  • You can have a booking without a ticket: this is used to "hold" a "seat" (not a physical one like 23K, but a "place" on the flight). It can be done without a matching ticket, or a ticket in some kind of "pending" state (there are often restrictions on what fare classes allow this and other conditions).

When you do your "booking", they will usually:

  • Create a booking (this ensures there's availability on the flight).
  • Then create a ticket, linked to the booking.

Depending on the channel used, the GDS in play, the airlines involved, there are quite a few complexities linked to rule checking, fare validation, possibly payment, and so on.

You may end up with states of "OK", "Confirmed" or "Ticketed" (well, those are the good ones, there are plenty of "bad" ones). The state shown to you may not necessarily match what is inside the system (on either the booking or the ticket).

When you book online and they say "all done", it can really mean anything depending on their systems. It could be:

  • We have recorded that you want to travel on that flight on that date, we are going to process it, we'll let you know.
  • We have actually made the booking (but we don't even know if it's confirmed yet), and the rest of the process is forthcoming
  • We have made the booking and it was confirmed, and the rest of the process is forthcoming
  • We have made a booking and requested the ticket to be issued, still waiting for that to happen.
  • We have made a booking which was confirmed, and the ticket was issued.

Add in the mix that the payment could have actually been taken at the time you clicked or not (if it is processed asynchronously) and other parameters, and you can see that it doesn't really mean anything.

In many cases, they will tell you "all done" relatively early, and then all sorts of machinery will come into play in the background, and the actual process may take seconds, minutes, hours... or days. Or someone or something on the way may have an issue with the booking and/or ticket and then if you're lucky you are notified, if not it gets stuck in limbo.

Now, if you want to be reasonably sure that everything that should have been done was actually done, you should check:

  • For a PNR reference (often called just PNR, booking reference...). Note that there may be several, from the travel agent, the GDS, and each airline involved (which can become complex in the case of code-shares or interlining).

    If you're lucky you have a single PNR that goes all the way down to the operating airline. If not, you may be able to retrieve the booking from the travel agent and get the airline PNR(s) from that, and then use those to look up your booking on each airline's website.

    The state should be at least "OK" or "Confirmed", but again, that does not necessarily mean much, they don't necessarily show the "real" state as-is.

  • For a ticket number (nowadays e-ticket number). That's a 13 or 14-digit number, and the first 3 digits designate the airline which issued it.

    Likewise the ticket could be shown as "OK" or "confirmed" or "ticketed". The latter is probably the "best" case, but it can be converted, so "OK" may really mean "ticketed" (or could mean nothing at all).

So, as you can see, it can be quite difficult to know for sure that everything is all right. But unless you have airline PNR(s) and e-ticket numbers, something may be missing. Sadly it's sometimes difficult to get the info (it may be in e-mails or on websites or you may need to call them to get the info).

If the booking was made via the Amadeus GDS, then you can look up info via their CheckMyTrip app. Ditto for Sabre via Tripcase and ViewTrip for Travelport (disclosure: I don't think I've ever used any of those).

Many LCCs use their own completely independent systems, and those may not make a distinction between a booking and a ticket.

Of course, as pointed out by others, even if everything is 100% fine at some point... the following can still happen:

  • The airline cancels the flight
  • The airline changes the flight schedule (and possibly decides to move you to a different flight spontaneously because connections or whatnot)
  • There is an issue with the payment and the ticket and/or booking are cancelled or put in some other "bad" state
  • The airline needs to swap out the aircraft for a smaller one and needs to do something with the now "extra" passengers
  • The airline overbooked and got it wrong and needs to refuse boarding to some passengers
  • ...

So whatever the "OK", "Confirmed", "Booked", "Ticketed", "Super-duper-A-OK" message you get... it's not necessarily worth much :-(

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