Boarding passes and check-in could be scrapped in air travel shake-up
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/11/boarding-passes-and-check-in-to-be-scrapped-in-air-travel-shake-up-plansOpen linkView original on feddit.nl174
Comments43https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/11/boarding-passes-and-check-in-to-be-scrapped-in-air-travel-shake-up-plansOpen linkView original on feddit.nl
And here is where they underestimate how belligerent people can be.
Uncle Tony on you tube likened air travel to jail… and I can’t shake it… I feel like a prisoner everytime I fly and HATE IT
I've honestly come to despise air travel. I take one round-trip per year; I'm not giving up visiting family and it is too far to reasonably drive.
Then twins walk into the airport and the system crashes.
And facial recognition has been known to fail with very dark skin so that'll turn into a racial issue real quick.
They can’t even reliably scan a QR code, how can they pull that off with 100% accuracy?
To be fair the bagging area issue is usually caused by a bad configuration, and usually weight based, not camera recognition.
Different stores setup those systems with varying parameters, some are so strict that just regular product variances go outside their limits.
I think the lesson to be learned is that everything works in the demo (except when it doesn’t), but when it’s deployed to thousands of sites by the cheapest contractors, operated by untrained and unmotivated personnel, and not calibrated or maintained over its lifetime… the reliability goes down a bit.
This also means people wouldn't be able to travel with cheap burner phones, which is extremely problematic for people who need to travel to and from increasingly authoritarian states.
It also means you are required to travel with a phone. Some people don't own a cell phone because they don't want one, need one, or can't afford one.
Is there a lot of overlap between people who can't afford a cellphone and are taking flights?
Not a lot, maybe, but in cases where someone else is paying for the flight, there may be some. And there are a fair number of older people who may be able to afford the plane ticket, but carry a dumb flip phone because that's what they understand and can operate.
Yeah anyone who travels with children.
That is funny.
Pshaw! Who wouldn't want an expensive personal tracking and monitoring device?!
I think that's a feature, not a bug.
Oh it absolutely is
TSA in the States has already pulled it off. they use sources they already have like your current and past passport and ID photos for verification and do not store the pic they take when crossing TSA. that's what the signs say at least. I guess it's good enough for them already..
Yeaaah iirc they will forever keep the fingerprints of anyone that wants to enter the USA
Sound worse to me for the travellers and airlines
I do not like this. At all. Facial recognition and forced digitization? I'm disabled, and when I request assistance, I literally cannot use a digital boarding pass. And the favial recognition just seems like such a breach.
Ah, just the privacy nightmare we need.
This would be stupid
The whole thing is just security theater and rights violations. It's so stupid.
Thanks I hate it
Pass
Companies already issue digital boarding passes. I have a government issued digital ID in a phone app. These are convenient.
But facial recognition? Hell no, f that.
Already here. It has been used in airport security lines for a few years now
Doesn't change the fact that FUCK THAT
Every bit of this sounds like it's own horrible idea and they just threw it all into one big horrendous pile of nonsense.
Lmaooooo yes let's that famously consumer-first megalith as our baseline
Amazon of the "just walk out" shops powered by AI, that turned out to be s lot of Indian workers in the background.
I gotta travel with my twin more often. I can 50-50 unlock his stuff. Let's fuck this up.
Another proof that biometry auth is stupid
This is the only part of that whole thing that sounds any good.
This isn't new though, I landed after a long flight last year and had a notification asking me to confirm rebooking to another flight because mine was delayed.
Turns out that no the flight wasn't delayed and luckily I mentioned it when dropping my bag because a person had to sort it out for me and rebooked me back on my original flight that was on time. So now I don't trust the technology at all.
It says "could" not "will", so they will just never implement that part.
there's exactly nothing preventing them from doing that in the current system
Yet another thing the Nazi's did, except now you're using computers. Fucking mind-blowing innovation.
Anal probes wouldn’t surprise me given how things are going
nope
Didn't know there were snakes in the UN
I've had it with these mother fucking snakes digitizing these mother fucking planes!
The airport tried that shit on me today. I was able to make it print me a boarding pass, though.
I'm becoming a luddite in my middle age.