E-tickets are a huge advantage. A lost paper ticket in a remote corner of the world is a disaster. A lost copy of an e-ticket receipt is only a problem until you can get to the nearest internet computer and printer. E-tickets still require a paper copy of the receipt (=PITA), but this sure beats the old red carbon booklets.

My brain always equated that bundle of tickets (e.g. RTW, perhaps less so for one-sies) to a Valuable Thing so I always knew where It was and wasn't about to lose it.

True enough the airline thought it was valuable too and might have charged me for a replacement, perhaps at today's point-to-point price. But as expected that never happened.

My brain thinks anything associated with an e-ticket is computer-generated paper, worth a fraction of a penny. It's included in our packet of hotel and car reservations and treated with the same (lack of) importance. None of it is essential - I "know" if need be I can always show up at the counter, state my name and desire, and all will be well.

And if it's NOT all well, nothing on any e-paper will make it better. "That's not what our records show."

That paper coupon had some authority - if I showed up for my flight, no matter what, I was owed something for it. If the airline had gone out of business overnight, I might be severely inconvenienced, but at least I had something instantly recognizable by everyone in the business that probably would have gotten me on my way.

The big advantage to paper tickets was that nobody ever paid any attention to the one-year limit on validity.

Excellent point, ajnaro.

The OP is completely right checking the ticketing process. I once was was on a DONE4 eTicket trip westbound from Europe to the US and then on to Australia, up to Asia. The ticket was issued by IB and I had flights on IB, AA, QF, CX and BA. Everything went well until I wanted to check-in for my first and only CX leg on that trip. They could find the booking, but not the eTicket. Of course, I had a printout of my eTicket, but they still couldn't find it.

The station manager was called and tried to contact IB. Now this was 9am in KUL and 3am in MAD. So he couldn't reach anyone. Finally, he decided that since I had credibility of having flown so many segments of that very ticket, also he could see the ticket in viewtrip and I was a OW Emerald, he will provide a hand written BP and take me onto that flight to HKG.

Obviously I reported this occurence to management level of our corporate TA and they took it to management level of IB. It appears that the error happened when IB sent the respective eTicket coupons electronically to all the carriers. They could prove that they had sent all coupons - and all but CX received them. However, the electronic message to CX never arrived and this apparently triggers no warning ...

So to be 100% sure, you have to check with all airlines involved, I'm afraid.