I redeemed SkyMiles for an around-the-world ticket back in 2003 (bad economy = many open FF seats) using SkyTeam (before CO, NWA & KLM, etc joined)

My itinerary included about 14 legs which was more than could be booked electronically, so I had to go to a Delta office and have them write it up by hand (for some reason they wouldn't write it up ahead of time), so had to go to an office and wait 4 hours and they hand-wrote my paper ticket on carbonless copy paper - around 8 legs per page, then they kept the original and the copy was my ticket (when i checked in for the flight i got a "real" ticket for the flight).