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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
by stinky613 9y ago
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?
- tyingq 9y agoThat 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.
- freehunter 9y agoMistakes 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".
- kerryfalk 9y agoThis 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.
- freehunter 9y agoEven 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.
- qeternity 9y agoI 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.
- skyrw 9y agoSo what you're saying is that you are an inconsiderate asshole.
- sctb 9y agoNo matter what we're replying to, it's not OK to post like this.
- ben_jones 9y agoThat'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.
- xaqfox 9y ago"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.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoSuch abuse is why genuine, life-threatening allergies get trivialized in the public mind.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoA perfect example of a mild antisocial behaviour. Makes me wonder if those are curable in humans, or are we doomed to forever not having nice things because of people acting this way?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
- maxxxxx 9y agoI 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?
- rhino369 9y agoThis 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.
- nataz 9y agoMy guess is that some planes can accommodate 2 jetways at once. One for first class/business, one for economy.
- rhino369 9y agoThat is definitely true. 747's often have several.
- gregmac 9y agoThis is why exceptional cases require exceptional responses, especially when a human that is going to get fatigued is involved. Don't just beep the same way every scan beeps, make a different noise. Show a large red "STOP" sign on the screen along with the problem. When you need to alert a human to an event that only happens once in every few hundred cases, you can't be subtle.
- douche 9y ago> 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.
- speedyapoc 9y agoAlmost certainly human error. 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI 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.
- Scoundreller 9y agoIs the cashier "dumb" if their screen reported $100?
- thaumasiotes 9y agoIt didn't, though.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI'm really surprised a Chinese bought IKEA card could be used in the USA anyways. These things usually rent transferable between countries.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
- codegeek 9y agoAround 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.
- casta 9y agoIn 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.)
- nhf 9y agoDelta'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.
- javiramos 9y agoFunny- 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.
- caseysoftware 9y agoWhich 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?
- dzdt 9y agoCabin crew is supposed to do a headcount as well, so there is a good chance you get booted at that point.
- stinky613 9y ago> 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.
- ska 9y agoIs 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?
- lucaspiller 9y agoI 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.
- ska 9y agoInteresting. This may also be region/carrier specific I suppose. I've seen some pretty old looking consoles in smaller airports.
- joering2 9y agoGates changes soo often it would be truly impossible to have the scanner check if you boarding correct plane. The mess would be disaster. AFAIK, the scanner only checks "okay this is the airport you supposed to be inside within 48hours timeframe". That's all.
- stinky613 9y ago...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
- joering2 9y agoIf 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.
- lucaspiller 9y agoI 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!
- uxhacker 9y agoIn 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.
- pdelbarba 9y agoIt'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.
- mseebach 9y agoI'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.
- josemrb 9y agoI'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.
- kalleboo 9y ago> The beep usually is a response from the reader indicating that the code has been read successfully. In Japanese domestic terminals, the gates are definitely more advanced - they play a different chime depending on your frequent flier status.