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Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

theguardian.com

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Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#11

Post by Freak_NL »

MandieD wrote: post #4

And if your phone gets lost or stolen in the middle of your international journey...

Or if you don't have a smartphone. Seriously, are we making owning one of these (even more) mandatory now?

If someone is travelling with someone with a severe disability, or children, do they need to include them on their smartphone? What about people who just don't want one? Or can't use one? People with a dumbphone?

Or will there be a way to travel with a boarding pass, the price for which is being submitted to extra checks and longer lines, because if it isn't made extra inconvenient more people would do that?

Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#12

Post by Freak_NL »

adiabatichottub wrote: post #10
MandieD wrote: post #4

And 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…

The language used here ('obsolete') strongly hints at making this the primary case, with any secondary option deemed inferior. It wouldn't surprise me if using a paper boarding pass will just flag you in the system for extra checks.

> Could your doppelganger cause confusion with the check-in system?

That's the scary one.

Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#14

Post by RandomBacon »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
MandieD wrote: post #4

And 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.

Hopefully you don't have any allergic reations, wear bandages, grow beards, experience weight changes, etc.

Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#15

Post by dan_can_code »

I really don't think this is a good idea. There's already enough digitisation with physical back up in this situation. I think this is a case of not fixing something that isn't broken.

This is also quite scary.

> airlines will instead be alerted when passengers arrive at the airport and their face is scanned.

Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#16

Post by JumpCrisscross »

RandomBacon wrote: post #14
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Hopefully you don't have any allergic reations, wear bandages, grow beards, experience weight changes, etc.

> Hopefully you don't have any allergic reations, wear bandages, grow beards, experience weight changes, etc.

Digital ID has no issues with me having or not having on glasses, growing and losing a beard or having had one eye patched. When it has, a person can make a subjective call. Like, people lose boarding passes all the time. The status quo is faulty and expensive.

Re: Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up

#18

Post by bigbuppo »

jdlshore wrote: post #5

The 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?

The sort of people that like tracking the movements of everyone but also have no idea how reality actually works.
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