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Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

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Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#31

Post by chime »

leoedin wrote: post #27
brk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking he never changed the actual flight info, he just manually "photoshopped" the data on the ticket. Even with the barcodes, many airports and lounges do not actually check the barcodes, they just visually verify the info. There was a story a few years back when Delta and some others started doing boarding by zones. People were doing online checking, saving their printable ticket as a PDF or whatever, and ed…

I don't understand the apparent desire for early boarding. Almost every airport lounge I've been in has been more comfortable than the aircraft. The plane's not going to leave without you. I much prefer sitting in the lounge and wandering on last.

Space for carry-on luggage is limited. If you board last, there is a high possibility that the airline will check-in your carry-on luggage instead. This will cause you a delay since now you need to wait in the baggage claim area after arrival. Had you boarded just 5mins prior, someone else might have to wait 30mins in baggage claim instead of you.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#32

Post by corin_ »

leoedin wrote: post #27
brk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking he never changed the actual flight info, he just manually "photoshopped" the data on the ticket. Even with the barcodes, many airports and lounges do not actually check the barcodes, they just visually verify the info. There was a story a few years back when Delta and some others started doing boarding by zones. People were doing online checking, saving their printable ticket as a PDF or whatever, and ed…

I don't understand the apparent desire for early boarding. Almost every airport lounge I've been in has been more comfortable than the aircraft. The plane's not going to leave without you. I much prefer sitting in the lounge and wandering on last.

The only reason I don't like boarding last is that sometimes the overhead storage is so full it can be a pain in the ass to fit my suitcase anywhere near my seat, which not only is a minor annoyance when boarding, but can delay me when getting off (if I have to put it further behind where I sit). Generally I aim to be in the last 3rd of people boarding.

There are also budget airlines that don't offer reserved seating (e.g. EasyJet and Ryanair in Europe - I think, I don't fly these airlines though), so priority boarding on them allows you to chose a seat, or to ensure you sit next to whoever you're traveling with.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#33

Post by corin_ »

nly wrote: post #30
sleepyhead wrote: post #16

Can people please stop using "hacking" about every little tweak, tip, or technique to gain something?

A hack is a novel solution using existing technology outside of its primary intended use case. Even though this is a 'social hack', a hack is nonetheless exactly what this is.

It can be taken too far though. If I go shoplifting am I "hacking the shop"? If my shower breaks and I pour bottled water over myself to clean am I "hacking bottled water"?

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#34

Post by tashi »

joezydeco wrote: post #19
shangxiao wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the 100th visit they'd get suspicious that you're scoping out the joint for a terrorist act.

Not if you tell them you're just going to eat. Seems like that's pretty easy to confirm. Why be sneaky about it? Obviously nobody at the airline lounge cared that this guy showed up every day, why would the guards care?

Imagine you're a guard there and I drop by every day for a meal. You're wondering if I'm a a terrorist looking for security holes while I eat, and your biggest concern is false negatives: you would hate to rule me out as a threat and then find out I blew up your airport. What questions would you ask me to figure that out?

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#35

Post by ekianjo »

sleepyhead wrote: post #16

Can people please stop using "hacking" about every little tweak, tip, or technique to gain something?

Hacking has unfortunately become a buzzword, and now you can apply it to just about anything to make something stupid sound clever: "Honey, let me hack the light bulb for you". I agree with you, it's plain ridiculous.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#36

Post by duairc »

corin_ wrote: post #33
nly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hack is a novel solution using existing technology outside of its primary intended use case. Even though this is a 'social hack', a hack is nonetheless exactly what this is.

It can be taken too far though. If I go shoplifting am I "hacking the shop"? If my shower breaks and I pour bottled water over myself to clean am I "hacking bottled water"?

Shoplifting can be a bit of an art. I agree with you that the “hacking” thing is overused, but I think it makes sense to call something like booster bags a “hack”, for example. There are lots of “hacks” for shoplifting.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#37

Post by rch »

dmethvin wrote: post #11

In any airport I frequent, this would not be worth the money. Some garages offer free parking for 30 minutes for pick-ups, but by the time you park, go through security, eat, and return you would owe at least $4. Then there's the time/gas cost of getting to/from the airport. Even if you used public transport it could be expensive, it's like $16 round-trip on BART from SFO to downtown San Francisco.

It's really not a problem for places with decent public transportation. There are parts of the world where it makes sense to have a monthly or annual pass. I've no idea what it is like in the area where this occurred though.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#38

Post by p4bl0 »

sleepyhead wrote: post #16

Can people please stop using "hacking" about every little tweak, tip, or technique to gain something?

I agree that the word is overused. Just like "hacker" is. For instance I don't think half the articles linked here on Hacker News have anything to do with hacking (I'm not saying this is bad), and a lot of them pretend to be by having "hacker" in the title (and this, I think, is bad: no, it's not because you coded that in Ruby or Node.js instead of PHP that your blogging platform is for hackers…).

But clearly "hacking" can be used for things other than computer related stuff, and I feel like calling a clever trick "hacking" is less harmful (well, it's even harmless IMHO). Getting back to your comment, I feel that here it is a valid usage of the word. Take something similar for instance: calling Steal This Book [1] a kind of society hacking cookbook (it is mostly outdated though) feels completely right to me.

Defending the meaning of the word may be important, but wanting to restrain its usage all the time is useless and counterproductive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#39

Post by nly »

corin_ wrote: post #33
nly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hack is a novel solution using existing technology outside of its primary intended use case. Even though this is a 'social hack', a hack is nonetheless exactly what this is.

It can be taken too far though. If I go shoplifting am I "hacking the shop"? If my shower breaks and I pour bottled water over myself to clean am I "hacking bottled water"?

Shoplifting is anticipated and not at all novel. It's not out of scope of the shops primary function (one of which is to protect the retailer).

Perhaps 'trick' would be a better term in this airport case. I guess the difference between a trick and a hack is that you can't trick a machine (it does what it's told and doesn't care what your intentions are) but you can certainly trick people (they can be fooled in to misreading your intentions and responding dynamically). Also a trick is usually just about improving device utility rather than re-purposing it.

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