With CO leading the way in getting all their interline partners to go to e-tickets, it would behoove them to actually teach the morons at NW YUL how to handle them. Had a call from a passenger today heading CO YUL-EWR to connect to SQ for EWR-SIN-KUL...and NW YUL kept telling him that "(you) need a paper ticket"...and something about "we can't see the e-ticket....it isn't accessed to the file"...even though on my email I could see the e-ticket as issued by the wholesaler, Tour East Holidays.

I will say that CO Res (David in SLC) handled the matter quite quickly, and all was set in a matter of a few minutes in a prompt and professional fashion from CO....but....this just reiterates the joys of 3rd party ground handlers who could care less about the contracted carriers.

NW YUL seems to be totally clueless....years ago, when e-tkts first came out, they kept asking me for "a redemption voucher" when travelling on a pass set up by CorpComm to get to the Iowa State Fair....then reluctantly sent me onwards to DTW "let them handle the problem there", where the agent looked puzzled -- "you're all set....you have your boarding pass for DSM....don't they know what they're doing in Montreal???"

I'm not sure it's even the third-party groundhandler's fault.

Half the time CO issues me an e-ticekt for travel on DL, DL can't see the thing. DL employee or not, I always carry a receipt with me, show them the number, then they can pull it from some system since they're SkyTeam.

I had this happen to me last week. I was traveling on an award ticket issued by CO that had segments on CO, NW, and DL. The CO and NW segments had no problems, but upon check-in the DL kiosk claimed to not be able to locate my reservation. The DL agent was able to find it, but said that although I had a reservation, there was no ticket in the record and asked me for a ticket number. I had lost my printed itinerary, and just by chance had my previous segment's NW boarding pass on me, which happened to have the ticket number on it. If I hadn't had it, I'm sure I could have called CO and gotten the ticket number, but it did catch me a bit off guard, and reinforced to me the wiseness of having all confirmation, PNR, and ticket numbers handy.