Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#2But I don’t -want- my face scanned constantly
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#3Hah, as a programmer, thanks but no thanks.
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#4And if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey...
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#5The airline ticketing industry is run by a massive pile of shared legacy code. (Except Southwest, which has a different pile of legacy code, as I understand it.) Changing it seems like a really big deal.
What I didn’t see in the article was anything about the motivation for this change. Why undertake such an expensive revision to boarding systems? Who is benefiting?
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#6And if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey...
Doesn't the same concern apply to your passport?
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#7Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43656433
(“Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter” [1].)
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#8Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#9And if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey...
> if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey
Presumably your face still works. And if both fail, you do what one does when you lose your boarding pass: talk to the gate agent.
Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up
#10And if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey...
Or just runs out of batteries and you don't have a charging cable. Maybe you could ask a stranger for help, but you're in a country where most people don't speak your language. Or maybe people do speak your language, but you have a phone with a charging port that isn't standard in the country you're in. Also, you're about to miss your flight.
I think we can all agree that edge cases will always exist. The question is does this system make those cases better or worse. What's the backup in case the first-line system fails? You go talk to the airline agents and get a paper boarding pass printed?
The facial recognition system I'm much more wary of. Will it recognize you if you are coming back home with a black eye (happened to me one time)? Could your doppelganger cause confusion with the check-in system? Is this system significantly more convenient for the traveler that it's worth putting your biometric data into a database that could potentially be appropriated for other purposes?