Why "ездить на самолёте" but "билет на самолёт"?

Question

With verbs of motion like ездить you use на + prepositional case for means of transportation and в or на + accusative for destination, but with билет you use accusative for both. Is there a reason for this?

Answer 1

The noun билет 'ticket' needs the prepositions на/в + a noun in the Accusative case, the choice of a preposition depends on what the ticket is used for.

• With kinds of transport на + Accusative is used:

билет на самолёт – airplane ticket

билет на поезд – train ticket

• With entertainment, sport, etc. events на + Accusative is used, too:

билет на концерт – concert ticket

билет на футбольный матч – ticket for a football match

• в + Accusative is used with the names of buildings where entertainment events take place, like theater or cinema:

билет в театр – theater ticket

The use of the Accusative case is due to the fact that those expressions really denote the destination where you will go with that ticket.

And naturally, as @user31264 wrote in his comment, with planes you use летать на самолёте, not ездить на самолёте, because ездить means 'to travel on land transport', or 'to travel on a kind of transport', but in this latter case you dont specify the kind of transport. If a European says "Я часто езжу в Нью-Йорк" – "I often go to New York," that would surely imply using either ship or plane.