When I was a travel agent, we used to have dot matrix printed IATA ticket stock. You'd tear off the agent and audit coupons, leaving the flight coupons intact. Upto 4 in one ticket I believe. These were all red backed to allow the print to transfer onto each coupon. 1-3 sector journeys would require the "void" coupon(s) to be pulled at time of issue. Anything over 4 sectors required issuing conjunction tickets with the associated numbers printed in the relevant boxes and then the actual booklets had to be stapled together. At check in, they'd tear the coupon out and either retain or attach to the back of your boarding pass for pulling at the gate. No coupon, no flight. And if the airport forgot to pull the coupon, no revenue for that sector.
I much preferred automated ticketing. Those booklets were a b*gger to keep neat and legible. Although they definitely had their uses. If you miss a ticket deadline these days, forget it. Back then you could grab a manual ticket, back date on the validator and write out the ticket by hand.
By the time I got around to Oneworld Global Explorer and Star Alliance RTW fares we'd gone over to the ATB (boarding pass style) thermal coupons. End result was a neater bar coded ticket that doubled as a boarding pass. I still had to type in the entire route in linear format onto the tickets LON BA D X/FRA CX D HKG QF D SYD QF D AKL LA D SCL LA D JFK BA D LON. END DONE5 style. Manually enter the fare and away you go. Having completed my IATA levels 1&2 ticketing and fare constructions, my colleagues were happy to let me do it all for them. I dare say I'm somewhat of a nightmare whenever I need to talk fares and ticketing rules with an airline or travel agent - these days its mostly all scripted for them and they generally just tab through the boxes until an sticker number appears. And people wonder why their IT ticket isn't upgradable when booking though a travel agent these days... most of who wouldn't know any better because the computer does or doesn't say so
