Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at the gate if it isn't even checking to make sure the ticket matches the flight?
Anecdotally, I had a standby ticket recently when my seat was reassigned to a paying customer, although I still had a boarding pass for that seat. I was halfway down the jet bridge before the gate agent realized that my ticket had been revoked.
I imagine it's second nature for gate agents to let passengers through, and one lapse in judgement can cause the United incident, despite the software showing that the ticket was invalid.
Multiple human errors. Once she was on the plane, she found (unsurprisingly) that her seat was taken. A steward on the plane looked at her boarding pass and found her another seat.
I bought a gift card at IKEA in Shanghai for 100 yuan once. Shortly afterward, I visited IKEA in Palo Alto and asked a cashier how much was on the card. She scanned it and reported a hundred dollars. I asked her to confirm that, which she did, and then she offered me a "receipt" of the scan, which I accepted.
The printout correctly showed that the card contained 100 CNY. I've thought of IKEA ever since as a store where the cash registers are smarter than the cashiers.
I can't guarantee that it was usable -- I didn't try to buy anything with it, and for IKEA US to sell to me in CNY they'd have to have an exchange rate set up -- but it was definitely readable.
On the other hand, when I asked the recipient (it was a wedding gift) about it later, he reported that his wife had recorded it as having an appropriate-given-the-exchange-rate quantity of USD, so I suspect it was in fact usable.
I've built a few systems for low-cost airlines in South America. There shouldn't be a lot of difference with bigger airlines around the world.
The boarding software usually checks that:
- The boarding pass is valid (checksum)
- The flight state is correct e.g. 'boarding' and 'open'
- The passenger did check-in
- The passenger haven't boarded yet
More advanced implementations can match the gate with the flight, this is optional.
The beep usually is a response from the reader indicating that the code has been read successfully.
The result of the operation is displayed in a screen and the attendant has to read it and act accordingly.
This is just a guess but I fly a _lot_ (~40 flights so far this year). My guess is that the software probably did its job, the gate agents are often just automotons and don't really check anything other than your boarding zone.
Even then, I often board with my coworkers who have higher status than me. If we're sitting next to each other and he's in group 2 but I'm in group 6, I'll generally board with him anyway and no one seems to care.
The system may not be aware of something like boarding groups, especially since every airline does them differently.
It's entirely possible that the "check" is "is this boarding pass checksum valid.", especially given the stories of boarding wrong flights - it doesn't even flash red for "this is not the right pass for this flight".
Depends on an airline and maybe even airport, I guess.
Anecdotally, last time I was flying on a business to Germany with Lufthansa, my cow-orker did the Internet check-in for me without me knowing, and printed out the boarding passes. I later did the check-in for myself again, and picked a different seat. At the airport, the friend gave me the boarding pass he printed (with the old seat number), and so I thought, let's check if it still works on the scanners. I scanned it when boarding, and the scanner threw up an error that the seat on the pass does not agree with the one that's actually booked. I pulled the up-to-date boardin pass on my phone and continued on my way - but it seems that there is some actual checking being done, not just CRC.
I have my friends do this when they travel with me. I tell them that if the gate agent says something, tell them you have a peanut allergy and need extra time to wipe the seat down. That line has worked every time.
"tell them you have a peanut allergy and need extra time to wipe the seat"
Another often overlooked travel tip is that you can park in handicap spaces to save walking 10 extra feet.
That's not a life hack thats deliberately lying to someone whose job requires them to accommodate you to sometimes great degrees. Like not serving peanuts to those around you.
That wouldn't be a global issue. Airlines each implement their own gate area boarding pass reader software.
So that's a airline specific design decision. It could be that for United, the beep indicates a valid boarding pass of any type, but a display shows the flight info...and the matching is manual.
I was wondering about that too. I once did the same thing. Went to gate 35A instead of 35B, scanned boarding pass, a person even looked at it. Nobody noticed until I saw the sign right above the door with the gate number so I turned around. What are they scanning and what are they looking at?
This is second hand info, so I can't personally vouch. But I heard the scanners at gates with multiple jetways (for example 35 A and B) have software that is set up to accept tickets for both flights. Not sure why you would board both flights concurrently, but may that was a desired feature.
There is also likely a human error component. When you make someone manually scan 150 people they stop paying attention. They should have some kind of error message, but if it looks like other error messages (like the ask about emergency exit message), it's possible the human confused the error and cleared it.
In some airports, airlines are essentially leasing gate space from the airport and any software the airline wants installed on the gate computer has to work in a very fixed set of constraints.
The shared gate agent computers are built from an industry-standard OS image (8 years or so ago this was Windows XP SP2, and not SP3, never SP3).
> When you make someone manually scan 150 people they stop paying attention
Bingo. This is not really a job that people, in general, are any good at. If there was an automated turnstile that didn't suck, that'd be a great place for one, so they could focus on the exceptional cases instead of being lulled to sleep by the happy path.
Around 2005, they scanned my boarding pass and let me board a wrong flight. I didn't even check the gate properly as I was in a hurry but I found out only when I got to someone's seat asking him to leave because it was "my" seat.
In Europe they are meant to check the name on the boarding pass against an id such as a passport.
I believe that the reader just shows your name.
I also think what the readers do is update the system to say that you are on that flight. This is for revenue reasons. Tickets can be issued by other airlines, and the revenue is not counted until you are on the flight.
Also in Europe the system matches you with your luggage. This is a security measure.
It's also for manifest reasons. They need to have information on who and what is in the aircraft to calculate takeoff distance, power, flap settings, etc. and to account for everyone in the event of an accident or someone at CBP getting bored.
I've was once "rejected" by the gate-machine when I accidentally gave them an old boarding pass - however, this was on EasyJet, an airline which actually runs on 21st century software.
Is the beep notifying "correct pass for this flight" or is it just notifying "code read successfully" and the agents job is to check that the ticket matches their flight?
I changed my seat once after getting a boarding pass, and at the gate the scanner raised an error - so yes it does seem like there is some actual checking done.
Mistakes like that can happen, since it depends a lot on the gate agent to check the information, usually at the same time they're helping people gate-check their luggage or print new boarding passes or work with standby passengers. That's the reason every flight I've ever been on has the flight attendant say "This is a two hour flight to [city]. If [city] is not your destination, please disembark now".
I was flying from Dublin once. They scan your ticket before security and at the gate, and use some sort of facial recognition to identify you in both places.
One woman was stopped as she entered the aircraft, as the attendent checking tickets saw that the flight on her ticket was for the day before!
Funny- this exact same thing almost happened to my sister a ~week ago. She boarded the wrong airplane (although the scanner beeped without any errors). Luckily, after sitting in the plane for 5 minutes, she realized that she had boarded the wrong plane. Her flight had changed gates.
Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?
From the numerous comments here, it's not matching the boarding pass to the flight or gate. Is it just boarding group? Is it that "yes, this is a valid ticket" or something else entirely?
Seems like an easy way to "disappear" - basically book a fight going somewhere, look around until you find a flight with open seats (Southwest would be best as no assigned seating), and then... poof?
> Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?
That's the question that's been nagging me since the day I read about this particular mistake. I wonder if there are any active public subreddits of airline workers; somewhere where I could hear a first-hand account of what those scanners are checking.
In my experience, when I tried to board the wrong flight, the scanner served its purpose making an alerting sound and making sure they'd prevent me from boarding on the wrong airplane.
This was with Delta (both my intended flight and the mistaken one.)
Delta's IT is pretty decent for a large airline. Their scanners have little built in receipt printers. If you scan the wrong boarding pass (e.g. first leg of your flight boarding the second leg), it'll make the connection and pop out a little receipt telling you where to go. If your seat gets reassigned at the last minute or you get upgraded, you get a receipt giving your seat number.
...and as the gates change the changes are reflected on screens displayed throughout the airport; it's not like the correct gate information is only stored in the minds of the employees working that day
If you suggesting or thinking the screens are somewhat connected or talk with the same system that the gate scanners are running on, then that's incorrect. Totally separate rail.
