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Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

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101–110 of 119 posts

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#101

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.

For people that work at airports this could be a very worthwhile hack.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#103
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't it get you in trouble? You'd have to check your bags under the standard ticket, but enter security under the premium one, and airport security might realize they have the same person on the flight twice. I thought that was a classic red flag?

Barring extraordinary circumstances, checking bags while flying is a textbook case of doing it wrong.

I don't even know where to begin telling you how wrong you are.

While I often just pack a carry-on bag for weekend trips, anything more than 2-3 days I'm checking a bag. I don't have to pay for it, my bags get priority-tagged so I don't have a long wait at the other end, and I've had to reroute due to weather at a connection twice in the past year, both of which I knew about before arriving at the airport.

So of the arguments raised against checking bags in the replies further down, none of them actually apply, and checking a bag means less stuff for me to lug around in the airports.

The choice of whether to check a bag or not is, thus, dependent on the specific passenger, the specifics of their trip, etc., and it is irresponsible and flat-out wrong to suggest otherwise, especially in such a "this is right and everything else is wrong" fashion.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? You don't need to carry anything and the guards probably know you pretty well by the 100th visit or so.

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

There are plenty of flying commuters. Don't think this would be a problem.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#105
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking bags adds a lot of time to your trip after the plane lands, you have to wait ages in many cases for the ground crews to unload and process your baggage. In addition the size for carry-on luggage is pretty large with a small amount of work you can pretty easily get all you need for a trip into the carry-on baggage.

Except for a few bad days, I generally don't wait long for my checked luggage. It's sometimes already there by the time I make it to the claim area. Finding overhead space can be a hassle and I much prefer boarding and unboarding without dragging a ton of stuff. And carry-on obviously limits the items you can bring along on a plane. Your arguments are perfectly valid for some, but this is isn't a case of "this method…

Your arguments are perfectly valid until the first time you arrive to your business meeting w/o your bags.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#106
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The plane's not going to leave without you. I saw at least one case where a checked-in passenger arrived around 7 min before the official departure time (he was in a bar) but the gates were already closed and they didn't let him in.

That's a different situation. Boarding time is often up to half an hour before departure. If you're at the gate but sitting (rather than queuing anxiously or even, as some people do, trying your best to board first for some reason) then they're not going to deny you boarding simply for being one of the last people to board the plane. If there's a gap between the queue ending before you arrive, then you're more likely…

Boarding first or near the first is much better when you end up with a seat near the back, since it means you can just walk all the way through a mostly empty plane, put your stuff in the empty overhead compartments, and get seated without having to make your way through a narrow corridor filled with other people fiddling with their stuff. If your seat is near the door, then the opposite of this advice holds: be one of the last to enter the plane, and you won't have to get jostled around by everyone else behind you walking by. I think if everyone queued up in this order (furthest from door enter first, closest to door enter last) it would make boarding a lot more efficient.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#108
post #57
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…

Bruce Schneier has written before on forged boarding passes https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_ow... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/10/hacking_tsa_p... Someone even created a boarding pass generator to demonstrate their weakness. They promptly got their door busted in by the feds.

> The way to fix it is equally obvious: Verify the accuracy of the boarding passes at the security checkpoints. If passengers had to scan their boarding passes as they went through screening, the computer could verify that the boarding pass already matched to the photo ID also matched the data in the computer. Close the authentication triangle and the vulnerability disappears.

The last time I flew, they scanned my boarding pass at the security checkpoint and made a bunch of random marks all over it. I would be surprised if they accepted your second, unadulterated boarding pass at the gate.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#109
post #99
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring extraordinary circumstances, checking bags while flying is a textbook case of doing it wrong.

Does it count as "extraordinary circumstances" that I carry a Leatherman pretty much everywhere I go? Since we became scared of everything sharper than a thumb , I've had to check a bag if I want to travel with my multitool, which I don't think is terribly unreasonable. I used to routinely fly with it on my person. I'd take it out of its sheath, put it in the basket for keys and change and such at the metal detector,…

I was unable to get into the US Mint while carrying a Leatherman. That was pretty shitty.

Re: Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story happened in China. I don't know about China, but maybe their airport security is not as bad as U.S. Personal story: Bringing liquids to airplanes is not allowed in Iran. I remember on our flight back from Shiraz, we brought about 8 liters of rose water, orange blossom water, etc. with us. The security saw it in the screen and asked what the liquid was. "Herbal water", I said. He nodded and called, "Next".…

They follow the American protocols, and then some. Last time I was there, after handing my bags over I got called to the inspector's room. They'd x-rayed my bags and seen a cigarette lighter [1]. I have no idea how they recognized it as such, but they pointed to the area in my bag where it had been seen, and asked me to open the bag and remove it. On another flight, we were all waiting in line to check-in, but the ag…

it's nothing more than security theater

it gives people the illusion that they're safe even though the actual incident which prompted the creation of the TSA and DHS has been ridiculously under-investigated and official conclusions' are full of holes.

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