We purchased a Belgrade-Ljubljana one-way JAT ticket on Sunday night, for travel in late July. We were, as the Brits say, chuffed.

The ticket came to just RSD5,942 (€74; $99). The JAT search engine worked fine, and we were approaching that magic, banal moment that drives all online air travel purchases: the invitation to print an e-ticket.

But the moment didn’t arrive. Instead of seeing a screen confirming our purchase, we were greeted by a screen informing us that we’d merely reserved our ticket, and that we had just four days to drop by a JAT office to purchase it.

Happily for us, there’s a JAT office here in New York. Yesterday morning we made our way to the JAT office on Madison Avenue to pick up our ticket. After a brief chat with two very friendly ladies, we were told that we’d need pay with cash or a money order. We ran down to an ATM to obtain cash to buy the ticket, and there it was: our handwritten, old school JAT ticket, for under $100. Its bright red duplicate and accompanying booklet of contract conditions and notices were reminders of the old, pre-Internet days of travel booking—as was the (unexpectedly) completely satisfying experience of purchasing a ticket from live, actual people in an office covered with airline posters and calendars.

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