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Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

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Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#51

Post by _ugfj »

lgbr wrote: post #44

I get that this is about preventing ticket reselling, but I have a different question: Can someone explain the controversy around face scans for air travel? Governments have clearly laid out that flying affords zero expectation of privacy, and the airlines won't let you buy a plane ticket without knowing your name (as opposed to bus or subway tickets). If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and veri…

> If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and verify your face when boarding anyway, then are we losing anything through the use of face scans?

Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach.

I have seen neobanks requiring such 3D face scans but not Ryanair yet.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#52

Post by FormFollowsFunc »

sureIy wrote: post #38

What is wrong with Ryanair exactly? Do they have too many customers and want to trim some out? All of these are just barriers to bookings and reasons to prefer other airlines. It's true that they don't have competitors on certain routes, but they certainly do a large number of them.

They have always treated their customers like crap and in the past it hasn’t hurt their sales. Though recently they have had to sell tickets lower than they would have liked to boost sales. They would like to give the impression that they are always the cheapest option but it’s not always the case and customers are too lazy to shop around. Other airlines have copied their tactics so the alternative isn’t always that much better.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#53

Post by jkaplowitz »

77pt77 wrote: post #20
jkaplowitz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s the second choice that noyb mentioned last year when announcing their complaint about the then-current version of Ryanair’s policy. In the new article which triggered this HN post, discussing Ryanair’s updated policy, the second option is sending Ryanair a handwritten signature and a copy of a government ID.

It's an airplane ticket. Not a house selling contract!

I agree it’s unjustified, yeah. I think even the old policy was inappropriate and this is far worse.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#54

Post by fipar »

amelius wrote: post #19
Eumenes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for making travel more expensive. Mostly to remove the trashy and rude people from the equation. I don't care about C02 but I do enjoy seeing megalomaniacs like John Kerry and Taylor Swift lecture us plebs on climate/social justice, but fly private jets everywhere.

More expensive isn't fair because travel would become a rich person's hobby. A better approach would be rationing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing

You're absolutely right, but the problem is the intersection set of rich people and powerful people is quite large (they're almost, but not quite, the same set) and why would they ration themselves?

If air travel rationing would ever be implemented, instead of travel becoming a rich person's hobby (which it already is, for a very loose definition of rich, a definition loose enough that it also counts people with in-house bathrooms with running water and waste disposal systems as rich) it would become a powerful person's hobby.

Not that different IMHO.

But, just to be clear, I'm totally with you. It's just that I'm terribly pessimistic.

What kind of gives me little moments of joy is thinking of what the 3000 version of "Fall of civilizations" podcast will have to say about what is happening now.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#55

Post by acdha »

dagw wrote: post #45
unsigner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t regularly take buses to the other side of Europe to eat some gelato and gawk at cathedrals for a weekend. A lot of people use cheap airlines as cheap entertainment.

don’t regularly take buses to the other side of Europe They used to. When I was growing up, way before budget airlines, buses used to be the way you traveled around Europe for cheap.

Definitely - and it’s nowhere near the carbon emissions so I think what happened is that they saw someone else’s data (hopefully inadvertently) comparing a mostly full long haul flight (148gm CO2/passenger/kilometer) to a city bus (97g) rather than the long-distance buses you mentioned which are far more efficient since they don’t stop frequently (27g).

https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#56

Post by lifestyleguru »

7bit wrote: post #40
madjam002 wrote: post #3

Requiring an account to book a flight seems perfectly reasonable to me

Why? Thank God in Germany it is forbidden to requiring an account for online purchases and you can buy anything online without needing to register for an account first.

Most merchants and service providers keep your shadow account after purchase anyway. If you are lawyery kind of person you can request deleting the shadow account by contacting them and giving away even more of your personal details.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#57

Post by Eumenes »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #27
Eumenes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for making travel more expensive. Mostly to remove the trashy and rude people from the equation. I don't care about C02 but I do enjoy seeing megalomaniacs like John Kerry and Taylor Swift lecture us plebs on climate/social justice, but fly private jets everywhere.

It got a magnitude more expensive since covid. Private jets are the problem, not Kate from the UK flying to Tenerife once a year via ryan air.

You think private jet flights outnumber commercial ones?

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#58

Post by lgbr »

_ugfj wrote: post #51
lgbr wrote: post #44

I get that this is about preventing ticket reselling, but I have a different question: Can someone explain the controversy around face scans for air travel? Governments have clearly laid out that flying affords zero expectation of privacy, and the airlines won't let you buy a plane ticket without knowing your name (as opposed to bus or subway tickets). If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and veri…

> If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and verify your face when boarding anyway, then are we losing anything through the use of face scans? Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach. I have seen neobanks requiring such 3D face scans but not Ryanair yet.

> Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach

Completely understood, but the point is that it's at CBP or UK Border Force or Bundespolizei, and it's in the security camera system at the airport, too.

If you've been a visitor to Australia recently, you'll be all too familiar with the process of using your phone to scan your face plus passport data.

When you enter the airport, you walk past signs notifying you of extensive surveillance camera use.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#59

Post by acdha »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #39
amelius wrote: post #4

This is a good thing. Let them put those facial scans on a wall of shame. Generating CO2 should be as awkward and uncomfortable as possible. I'm waiting for airlines to remove all passenger seats.

> Generating CO2 should be as awkward and uncomfortable as possible. Since essentially every activity generates CO2, what you are essentially saying is that life should be made as awkward and uncomfortable as possible. And this certainly feels like the approach many eco-activists are taking, triggering well-deserved backlash. The Green party in Germany, for example, does extremely sensible politics in most areas, but…

“Generating” is definitely the wrong term: burning fossil fuels puts sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere so we’d want to distinguish that from recirculating carbon as you would by, say, riding a bicycle where all of the carbon was recirculated.

I completely agree with your second point: the low-benefit performative stunts are so foolish that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the work of undercover saboteurs.

Re: Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

#60

Post by shever73 »

atlasduo wrote: post #41
shever73 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on why that seems reasonable to you? The airline will already have my passport and credit card details, home address and mobile number. In my opinion, it should be the user's choice whether they create an account or not.

User account is an interface between a User and a system one interacts with. If you book a flight, a user is created - no way around that. So, what you essentially demand is to NOT provide you with a user interface to interact with the system. Instead, you would resort to interface through online/offline/phone support. Your demand boils down to having less options to do actions with the business. Options that already…

> So, what you essentially demand is to NOT provide you with a user interface to interact with the system.

No, I’m requesting, or demanding if you prefer, the choice. An account is a user convenience, not a business necessity. I’m asking why it is reasonable to force customers to create an account to book a flight?

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