We have to drastically reduce air travel to cope with global warming and excess CO2. It's pretty unethical to fly more than a few times a year. CO2 injected into the upper atmosphere causes 2-3x warming vs ground level CO2 emissions.
Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
41–50 of 138 posts
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is second hand info, so I can't personally vouch. But I heard the scanners at gates with multiple jetways (for example 35 A and B) have software that is set up to accept tickets for both flights. Not sure why you would board both flights concurrently, but may that was a desired feature. There is also likely a human error component. When you make someone manually scan 150 people they stop paying attention. They s…
My guess is that some planes can accommodate 2 jetways at once. One for first class/business, one for economy.
That is definitely true. 747's often have several.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#43Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…
Funny- this exact same thing almost happened to my sister a ~week ago. She boarded the wrong airplane (although the scanner beeped without any errors). Luckily, after sitting in the plane for 5 minutes, she realized that she had boarded the wrong plane. Her flight had changed gates.
Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?
From the numerous comments here, it's not matching the boarding pass to the flight or gate. Is it just boarding group? Is it that "yes, this is a valid ticket" or something else entirely?
Seems like an easy way to "disappear" - basically book a fight going somewhere, look around until you find a flight with open seats (Southwest would be best as no assigned seating), and then... poof?
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#44This and all the stories in the news show that the airline industry needs some serious updating.
It feels like it's a classic case of where coming first can hurt you down the road. For example, part of the reason the US is so far behind on credit card technology (just getting around to adopting EMV) is because the US was the first country to widely adopt credit cards in the first place and there's a lot of inertia. In the airlines case, they were one of the first industries to computerize. Now they're stuck with…
The credit card point doesn't make sense. The UK and Australia have very high credit card use, but both have had EMV for well over a decade -- I think the UK was first with the modern standard.
The argument makes more sense for infrastructure that needs upgrading, like Internet access, railways, sewers, water pipes.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#45The headline is misleading. According to the information in the article itself most of the complaints can be solved by properly training staff to use existing tech as it was designed. One of main complaints of the article - that airline staff doesn't get passed enough information about a passenger's disability, so, for example, deaf people get met at the gate with a wheelchair, seems to be a direct result of using in…
> (for example, hard-of-hearing passengers can't hear announcements at the airport or on the plane)
You don't have to be hard-of-hearing to struggle with that. A PA system that actually worked would be lovely at most airports. I can't remember a time when I was waiting at a gate and could actually hear what the gate attendants were announcing; it's either completely silent, like their microphone isn't even on, or it's distorted so badly by the garbage equipment and accoustics that it just sounds like the teacher in Charlie Brown.
If I were older or less mobile, I'd be even more incensed by the way airports seem to have such a penchant for putting up blatantly false gate information more than about 45 minutes before the flight is scheduled for takeoff. The last three times I've had to connect somewhere, I've gotten off my incoming flight, looked up the gate for my next leg, power-walked a half-mile or more to the opposite end of the terminal, or had to leave and go to a different terminal - only to get there, relax for a few minutes, and notice that the gate information has changed and now the gate is two or three away from where I started, and I've got to burn tire to get back there.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The airline industry is already established and low margin so it's not an easy opportunity for disruption. Combine that with heavy regulation and needing tons and tons of very specific expertise and I doubt any VC would touch most of it with a 10 foot pole
The European industry was massively disrupted in the last decade or two by budget airlines. There's not only the western European companies, but even cheaper eastern ones like Wizz Air and AirBaltic.
That's true but it shows that the current industry already is driving down costs to rock bottom and is a bad target for the Silicon Valley style disruption, especially when existing players will just copy whatever you do
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#47The headline is misleading. According to the information in the article itself most of the complaints can be solved by properly training staff to use existing tech as it was designed. One of main complaints of the article - that airline staff doesn't get passed enough information about a passenger's disability, so, for example, deaf people get met at the gate with a wheelchair, seems to be a direct result of using in…
This was my impression of the headline as well. The biggest issues had nothing to do with technology, but rather with people. I guess it's not as surprising/newsworthy to say "Airlines are letting their employees mistakes negatively impact their customers". And they seem to have made the conscious choice not to mention accessibility or PWD in the headline, perhaps because they figured the article would get fewer clicks from people who aren't interested in accessibility.
I wonder if websites have considered the impact that clickbait headlines have on people with disabilities. For example, someone who navigates a page with a chin mouse controller, or who has fine motor difficulties due to palsy, is probably even more frustrated by misleading headlines than people who can quickly open and close tabs. Not that this headline is strictly clickbait (certainly not the worst kind), but just a related thought.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even then, I often board with my coworkers who have higher status than me. If we're sitting next to each other and he's in group 2 but I'm in group 6, I'll generally board with him anyway and no one seems to care.
I have my friends do this when they travel with me. I tell them that if the gate agent says something, tell them you have a peanut allergy and need extra time to wipe the seat down. That line has worked every time.
So what you're saying is that you are an inconsiderate asshole.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#49From experience I can say the Telco industry is exactly the same. It would not surprise me to find any industry that has been around 40+ years will be the same - they want to spend time and money doing what they do, IT is seen as nothing more than an expensive nuisance. Love them or hate then, that's why for example Uber & Telsa are so "disruptive" - they are focusing on the IT and the "Thing" (taxis / cars) is virtu…
"Exactly the same" only if you ignore everything about them that isn't consumer facing. Telcos are high-profit margin regional monopolies, whereas airlines operate at the margins and are fiercely competitive. Perhaps the only thing that can be said about them being similar is that they are high barrier-to-entry industries.
Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even then, I often board with my coworkers who have higher status than me. If we're sitting next to each other and he's in group 2 but I'm in group 6, I'll generally board with him anyway and no one seems to care.
I have my friends do this when they travel with me. I tell them that if the gate agent says something, tell them you have a peanut allergy and need extra time to wipe the seat down. That line has worked every time.
That's not a life hack thats deliberately lying to someone whose job requires them to accommodate you to sometimes great degrees. Like not serving peanuts to those around you.