Can you explain what this means?

What what means?

Pretty simple. There are a number of apps available for smartphones and a number of websites you can upload a barcode image to that will translate the barcode into whatever text (yes, a barcode is just a way to encode text into a machine-readable format) was used to create the barcode.

Pretty simple...but I will be happy to expand on it if you need this interpreted, too. :)

The whole two-part system of "reservations and tickets" is really a relic of the ancient days of travel--before electronic ticketing became popular. You needed a reservation so the airline knew you were coming and didn't sell too many seats on a given aircraft. Your travel agent would contact the airline and place the reservation for your seat. However, the reservation didn't have any intrinsic value in and of itself. You would pay your travel agency for the flight, and they would then issue you a paper ticket which did have intrinsic value, and you were required to carry that ticket to the airport (where you would obtain a boarding pass, which referenced the fact that you had a reservation for that flight) and surrender it when boarding your flight. The airline's accounting department after the fact would then settle the tickets and deal with exchanging money between itself and the travel agencies.

With the advent of CRSes (computer reservation systems) and the installation of GDS terminals in travel agencies around the world, the process of finding flights and placing reservations was streamlined a great deal, but you still had to pay your travel agent and get a paper ticket issued to provide when boarding (remember the boarding passes that said "FLIGHT COUPON REQUIRED"?), which the airline's accounting department then settled against the electronic reservation record.

Then, a couple of decades ago, the concept of the e-ticket came about, and the ticket details then remained stored in an electronic record. Still, aside from not having to physically present the ticket during the boarding process, the process remains the same: the reservation is created, the ticket is issued, the boarding pass is created, and then after the flight, the ticket is settled against the reservation.

Really, though, there's no reason there needs to be so many steps. It is this way because the airlines are still using the same 1960s-era mainframe-based legacy CRSes they always have, and it was a lot simpler and cheaper to modify the existing systems to deal with electronic records than to overhaul the entire system. All of the steps of the process you see during a modern day airline transaction correspond directly to manual steps of the process in the olden days. For more on that, check this thread out and read the next four posts.

If someone were creating an airline from scratch in the modern era (and didn't have to worry about integrating it with other, existing carriers and the messes created by interlining and codesharing and plating a ticket on one carrier for a flight on a different carrier and all of that), it would actually be fairly simple to program a system that just lets you book a flight. You'd receive a receipt that shows you're booked on the flight, and a quick verification of the receipt's validity would let you get on the plane. You could entirely skip the whole process of issuing a ticket and generating a boarding pass and ensuring that the reservation data and ticket data are in sync and all of that. That would be a ticketless system. But it would represent a wholesale change in the way the reservation system works, and I'm pretty confident Amtrak didn't reinvent the wheel. (We would know about it if they did.)

This is likely what actually happens. There's no real need anymore for the customer to know about or care about the ticket number. The conductors' iPhones are programmed to pull up the customer's record by the reservation number, and behind the scenes, ARROW then checks to ensure a valid ticket is attached to the reservation and allows the conductor to virtually "lift" the ticket.

What all the things you just elaborated on in the rest of your post mean, silly. :) And, thank you!

What he said (and thanks for writing that all out!).

As I like to joke, airlines are so innovative that they were one of the the first commercial users of computer technology way back in the 1950s (the contract establishing American Airline's partnership with IBM to develop SABRE was signed in 1957)--they just haven't been able to afford to upgrade since.

That may be an exaggeration, but the reality is that no matter how many upgrade iterations a CRS goes through, it generally needs to retain backwards-compatible functionality because there are so many other systems out there that interface with it (including the GDSes). Thus the need to keep the bifurcated reservation/ticket scheme even though we now live in a (theoretically) 100% e-ticket world. And although ARROW was developed specifically for Amtrak, it still was built for an (airline) paper ticket world--after all, I believe ARC-affiliated travel agents can still issue paper "flight coupons" (aka tickets) to this day for use on Amtrak.

surprise eVoucher
 

I took a special (1171) from BOS to NRO on Thanksgiving morning, and came back up on the Twilight Shoreliner (66) from NYP to BOS this morning, together on a multicity eTicket (my first eTicket).

66 got in to Boston around 7:50am. At 2:46pm, Amtrak emailed me an eVoucher, saying:

When I boarded 66, the conductor did seem to be having trouble with his iPhone after succesfully scanning the QR code (off a paper printout), and he fiddled around for 30 seconds or so before moving on. I suppose I should have asked him, but he looked sort of tired.

Is this a common failure? I wonder how many of these eVouchers they give out to passengers who actually took the travel as expected. I'm not sure if I should call them and let them know, or just take it as a windfall.

Thoughts?

Follow-up: my points for this trip posted, so I have no idea what this conductor's beef was. Not sure how on earth she could have lifted this ticket if there wasn't a ticket to lift, but somehow she did! :p

Never did get a call back from the refund department, but my refund just appeared... not very good communication and took way too long, but the refund is complete.

They need to reengineer the refund process!

Building on this point....could use some insights from the pros here re: Amtrak ticketing systems.

I also need to "top off" AGR points (500 mile pairs) and was thinking of booking NYP-WAS at 8am (scheduled arrival in WAS at 10:45am)

However-

Could I:
1. Buy and use the NYP-WAS ticket (8am - 10:45am)
2. Get off early in PHL in 9:10am
3. Buy and use a separate WAS-NYP ticket (8am departure) and board in PHL at 9:33am to arrive at NYP at 10:46am (the same time I was originally supposed to arrive in WAS on my outbound ticket?)

Will Amtrak's systems allow me to book and pay for overlapping tickets like this? If so, would there be any reason not to get the 1000 AGR points (and ~3 hours of time back)?

I don't think you will have any issues. It appears the AGR system does not really care about miss-matched tickets. I do the SAC RNO run quite a bit and they usually have my return posted as happening before my departure! It turns out they post LD trains as of it's departure from origin and not your boarding. So since the CZ leaves CHI three days before it leaves RNO, my ticket posts as of the CHI date.

As someone stated elsewhere: Amtrak doesn't care if you get off the train before your stop, but they do care if you get off before the train stops!

I don't know the answer but I loved this post and the way you think!

I rather suspect that AGR won't care about this trick. However, Amtrak computers might care if they run the housekeeping chore that looks for conflicting reservations. And if they do, then one reservation would end up being cancelled automatically by the computer.

There was one publicly reported incidence of a "force lift", and that occurred on the San Joaquin bus network over Thanksgiving. Because they were running extra sections on the LA-Bakersfield, Sacramento-Stockton, and a few of the other runs, rather than give the extra bus operators scanners Amtrak force lifted all bus tickets for that weekend, on the Thurway buses affected. Drivers were just asked to look at ticket stubs and not collect anything. Unfortunately, this reinforces the need to cancel unused tickets before departure, to avoid force lifting.

Computer Sweep for Conflicting Reservations
 

Maybe the pax could book the 2nd reservation with a middle initial, and not add the AGR# until right at departure time, so to the system they look less alike.

Also do you know anything about when and how this Amtrak conflicting reservation sweep procedure works? For instance does it run every night, or several times a day?

Since Amtrak does not readily allow same day changes, like Southwest, I could see pax on occaision might book more than 1 train, and then just refund the unused tickets or use the unused ticket value for later travel (like on Southwest). For instance your traveling NYP to WAS but you don't know wht time you actually want to or would be ready to leave NYP.

Also I wonder if Amtrak will ever be able to do standby like the airlines especially at bigger stations. Wonder too how high the no show factor is since at least in past you could get a refund or re-use the funds without penalty fee.

That middle initial would be enough to prevent you from earning points, even after adding your AGR number. They match the full name, plus the AGR number, before awarding points. There are people who've had trouble getting points simply because Jr. got left off the reservation.

Amtrak doesn't exactly publicize this, but I'm pretty sure that it's not several times per day. Seems more like a couple of times per month. But I sure wouldn't want to gamble either.

I have no actual info on the no-show factor, but I'm guessing that it's rather high since Amtrak seems to be working harder and harder to penalize those who don't show.

Don't see a standby list happening, at least not until Acela ticketing is handled in the way it was originally intended; if that ever happens. Originally Amtrak, when Acela was first introduced, was working on a system whereby anyone no-showing would be indicated in ARROW and that seat would go back on the market for stations further up the line.

Even if they ever implement that in the future, I don't see a standby list being maintained, most likely in today's electronic age you'd just keep checking to see if seats suddenly go on sale.

UA codeshare - how to?
 

I have an upcoming UA reservation with two Amtrak code share segments. Exactly how does one "claim" the e-tickets in advance? Call Amtrak, call UA? Can this be done online (self-service)? I'd prefer to have my tickets in hand before leaving for the station.

For the geeks out there, I ran another barcode that appears on an e-ticket printed by a Quik-Trak kiosk through a barcode decoder, and have one correction to my previous post. I also discovered one quirk, as you'll see below.

The only data that the bar code contains is the reservation number and date of issue (not travel, as I originally thought). However, the format of the reservation number differs depending on the barcode format.

The QR code that appears on the e-ticket PDF that Amtrak emails you or that appears on the mobile app, the data embedded in the code is formatted "123ABC-11FEB13".

However, the PDF417 barcode appearing on the old ticket stock has the same data embedded as "0119468420130211", where 01194684 is the reservation number and 20130211 is the date of issue (in this case the 11th of February, 2013).

The computer geeks out there may be quick to notice that these reservation numbers are actually the same--the only difference being that the QR code has it expressed in hexadecimal (and the way it would be read to you over the phone and printed on your itinerary), while the PDF417 barcode printed on old ticket stock is the decimal version of the number.

Why do they do it this way? Only Amtrak IT would know--after all, alpha characters can be embedded just as easily into a PDF417 formatted barcode as into a QR code.

However, it does explain why all Amtrak reservation numbers only use numbers plus letters A through F, unlike airline PNRs, which make use of numbers plus all letters (with the exception of easily confused letters like I and O). I highly suspect that the database behind ARROW is set up so that a reservation number uses exactly three bytes of memory (each hexadecimal number requires four bits, or half a byte)--to use a full alphanumeric scheme like an airline PNR would traditionally require six bytes of memory. And while the difference may be trivial now, when the computer reservation systems were first implemented decades ago a difference of three bytes (both for data storage and data communication purposes) would have represented significant savings and efficiency.

Actually, it's the PNR creation date, not necessarily the date of issue for any of the tickets therein. The two dates can be, and often are, different.

Fascinating. This is the stuff I dig. ;)

Amtrak's reservation numbers used to be all numeric; the system was upgraded to include letters sometime in the late 90s. IIRC, there were some conversion issues with duplicate numbers being assigned, but it all worked out fairly quickly. The upgrade significantly increased system capacity which was approaching the limits a six digit numeric reservation number could provide. That's a great example of a good problem to have.

We continue to have this "good problem" -- it used to be that reservation numbers would only ever begin with a 0 or 1, but the rest of the characters could be 0-9, A-F. Late last year, the first digit was also expanded to accommodate the full 0-9, A-F range due to capacity constraints. :)

I too recently rode an AMTRAK train and the conductor had issues scanning the code on my Android device. Eventually he was needed elsewhere and said he would be back later to scan it.

I forgot (as did the conductor) and today received an email RE: a voucher in the amount of the train "I missed".

I called AMTRAK and the agent was completely unsure of what to do and after a lengthy hold she came back, thanked me for being honest and said that she escalated the issue and somebody from AMTRAK higher up would take a look at it.

I have no idea if I will receive AGR points for the ride or not (as AMTRAK think I missed the train), but if AMTRAK is giving out vouchers for train travel actually used, that cannot be good.

Dan

It happens occasionally -- if you want to follow up directly with me via private message, we can look into it.

I wonder why he didn't just look you up by name. That's what I've seen them do when the scanner's not working.

I have no idea, other than to say the Conductor was an older Gentleman and seemingly was suspicious of technology as he kept saying he wished he had the paper tickets back.

Dan

Unless you desperately need the points, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. ;)

I completely get that, but part of me really wants AMTRAK to make money (they seem to have a hard enough time as it is making money without giving out vouchers for used train travel due to some IT glitch). Plus, even with the changes to Guest Rewards as of late I find it to be still a rewarding program (for my needs).

Dan

You could look at this as a problem of Amtrak's making. They have a less than perfect system of ensuring the on board scanning of tickets, with the result that some passengers don't get scanned and, with a voucher issued for the "no-show", effectively ride for free. In that sense, if someone takes advantage of the shortcomings of Amtrak's fare collection system, it is really Amtrak's fault. I suspect that for every one person who calls to correct the error, ten simply smile and use the voucher for future travel.

Having said that, I could not do it either. That's not because I feel sorry for Amtrak's sorry financial situation, but simply because it is dishonest. However, I would not jump through hoops to make it right. If I called to report it and they gave me the classic Amtrak CSR run-around, I would consider that an honest effort that was rebuffed by Amtrak, and walk away with the voucher.

You can also send me a private message to make it right! :)

I had a round-trip (four-segment) e-ticket, of which I only used two segments the other day and missed the last two. When I called Reservations today to confirm that the unused return segments were automatically converted to an e-voucher, the rep told me that I would have had to call the same day of travel to make that conversion happen and that I now need to speak with Refunds to get the value processed either into an e-voucher or a refund. Unfortunately I gave up after 30 minutes on hold after she transferred me. :td:

If I do nothing, and call Reservations back at a later date to use the remaining value of the reservation, what would happen? Would they tell me again to speak to Refunds first? Is there a default action that happens to unused tickets after any period of time if not auto-conversion to an e-voucher? And is there any way to schedule an appointment with the Refunds line if their hold times are so long?

I don't think there is any real difference between an e-voucher and a cancelled, unused ticket, so I don't think there is any conversion that needs to happen besides just generating the email to you with the eVoucher info in it. In fact, I strongly suspect that when Amtrak gives you a 13-digit eVoucher number, they are really just giving you what was formerly the internal (now well-hidden) ticket number for the e-ticket you had before cancellation.

I think you just got an agent who was confused. If you try again you should be able to get an agent who can issue the voucher info to you by email. Alternatively, you could just leave things as they are and use the PNR to access the stored value for new travel on a future call.

It is also worth noting that new tickets purchased with an eVoucher inherit the form of payment from the original funds. So, even if you do want the value refunded to the original FOP rather than reused, it may be easier to use it to buy a new ticket, then refund that ticket, rather than wait for Refunds to refund the eVoucher directly.

We recommend that customers call to cancel their space before no-show to avoid any issues. It is possible that your ticket(s) were not converted to eVouchers, in which case the value would remain in the PNR for future use (like an eVoucher). I would be happy to research and accelerate the resolution process if you send me a PM with your member number and PNR details.

As for the second comment, eVouchers and ticket numbers are actually not the same thing... although they share a similar number format, they are indeed distinct objects in our system and are accessed and applied in different ways.

Thanks for chiming in. The outbound segment was badly delayed and we used another mode for the return after having missed it. I was having too much fun with my friends on the train to want to interrupt the experience by bothering to call. :cool:

It's not a big deal nor a big dollar amount, so I'll sit on it for now till it's time to book again. The lack of consistency/clarity around this process is a bit odd, though. Thanks again...

You know, I hate change but these have been a godsend. I still liked the way the old tickets look better (nostalgia!) but being able to print my ticket out, not have to worry about tickets being "lifted" and not dealing with an incredibly long wait for points to be posted has been really great. Luckily on every train I've been on the scanning has worked easily. No complaints here.

I really hate the new eTicket policy on-board.

On the Northeast Regional, the conductors scan your ticket every time they do a crew change. In the case of trains 66 and 67, they will wake you up for that. They advertise those two trains as red-eye trips where you can sleep on the train and wake up at your destination. That won't happen if you can't sleep! What's the point of using seat checks if they're going to re-scan your ticket every 200 miles or so? They didn't do this back in the day with paper tickets!

Every NE Regional train I have been on since the eTicketing went live has done this. I asked a conductor about it and they said it's the policy now.

I'm very pissed off and disappointed in this new system. I will never take 66/67 again since I will never get any sleep.

Why can't you put your e-ticket with the seat check, or display it prominently elsewhere, or tape it to your shoulder with a note that says "scan away, but do not wake me please"?

I'm sure as heck not going to leave my phone dangling from the overhead rack while I sleep!

Err maybe print a hard copy of the ticket online or at a quiktix machine?

I'm typically running for my trains last-minute. Really, though, why should I have to do that? Isn't the point of a mobile boarding pass so that you don't need to do that?

I agree with diburning. The ticket should be scanned, you should get your seat check, and then you should be left alone for the rest of the trip (day or night). With the seat check, there is absolutely no reason to require re-checking tickets. (If crews can't read the other crews' seat checks, then Amtrak needs to standardize that.)

The seat checks ARE standardized across the railroad. In fact, they are no different from the ones they used back when they used to take ticket stubs.

Also, where the hell do I find tape on board the train? If I put my ticket on the slot next to the seat check, or leave it out in the open anywhere, I'd have a problem if it's not there when the conductor comes by to check it.

I wanted to use the app, but the iPhone app does not handle multi-city tickets correctly. It crashes when I try to bring up the barcode. It showed leg 1 as the outbound, and leg 2 as the return, and leg 3 probably makes it crash.

I guess I just do not see the difficulty. I am on the train weekly, and while I use the app, I find it much more convenient to have print outs of my e-tickets with me. Even if I later change the train the bar code still scans and the original print outs are just fine.

I too would be annoyed if I was disturbed on a red-eye train, but it just seems so easy to board with a print out - or multiple print outs - to assure that you are not disturbed. Maybe when you throw them in your bag you can even tuck in a small roll of tape.