9 ms·

Redesigning the airport boarding pass (2010)

122 points by skanderbm 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago
One thing that these types of articles tend to overlook is consistency across the different types of boarding passes. You have home printed boarding passes that will be printed on all sorts of awful printers, with bad settings (like printing color to a b/w printer) and poor resolution. Then, some will be printed on thermal printers at airports, and some on airport controlled thermal printers, some on airline controlled thermal printers. Different models, with different stock, etc. Finally, the mobile boarding passes. The employees checking these do better if there's some uniformity across the various formats. Similar for customers. So, there is a bit of "lowest common denominator" in the current designs. It's on purpose.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  Meh, the employees will just scan the barcode and look at their computer anyway.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    The gate agent can do that. Flight attendants can't. Same for the ticket counter.
    - Nullabillity 9y ago
      I guess that depends on where you're flying from. The only airport in the last couple of years where I've even had a boarding pass was RIX, otherwise it's always just stored on the frequent flier card.
davemtl 9y ago
Although this blog post is a few years old, I'd like to shed a little light onto why boarding passes haven't changed in years. To redesign the boarding pass, you have to understand how the data is processed and presented. Often the terminals and printers are shared between airlines, so there has to be a standard. Each airline uses something called a PECTAB. This a basically a template that has coordinates of where the data is to be printed (text & logo). It's loaded on the printer each time the airline terminal application (such as Sabre, Amadeaus, etc.) connects to the CUTE (Common Use Terminal Emulator, IATA standard) API hosted on the computer which acts as a gateway to the printers, OCR scanner, etc. Did I mention this is a shared terminal by several airlines that have completely different applications? :) A lot of the BTP (boarding pass) printers either use the older dot style printing, but the newer thermal (GPP) printers are becoming more common because they are cheaper to maintain. Unfortunately, the terminal emulators and CUTE standard hasn't kept up to date with the available technology, a lot airlines are still running on mainframes from 25+ years ago.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Great comment, and informative, but... >a lot airlines are still running on mainframes from 25+ years ago That's really not related to this topic at all. The TPF mainframes have little to do with how the boarding pass looks. That functionality is in other systems/code. The TPF mainframe for most airlines at this point is just a big nosql database, surrounded by a bunch of other systems that aren't old. If you replaced it, the customer facing stuff wouldn't look or act much differently. The sprawl of the applications around it, and the lack of consistency across those is actually a bigger problem than the TPF mainframe.
- naner 9y ago
  I remember reading this similar (though not as polite) criticism in 2010: https://ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-like/ https://ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-lik...
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  See my other comment - they have actually changed a bit, and it's perfectly possible to produce better designs with the existing tech (not the colorful ones though).
- blantonl 9y ago
  That doesn’t make any sense, considering the use of mobile device boarding passes. My guess is there is a bridge developed to translate those boarding passes to PECTAB format for submission to common systems?
pinaceae 9y ago
this is so old (2008, with updates till 2010). why is this up again? must have been on HN multiple times now.
- dewey 9y ago
  Because enough people found it interesting enough to upvote.
- hk__2 9y ago
  > must have been on HN multiple times now. It has been posted 8 years ago [1], then again twice 7 years ago [2,3], then 3 years ago [4]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1029181 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1278476 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549613 [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7791097
- icebraining 9y ago
  xkcd: Ten Thousand. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I rest my case.
techbubble 9y ago
I wish someone would add the departure time (origin TZ), flight duration, arrival time (origin TZ) and arrival time (destination TZ).
- robaato 9y ago
  Amen brother. I often ring to get a taxi to meet me at the arrival - with current design I have to look it up separately as opposed to on boarding pass... Also an indication of predicted flight time is really useful (even if subject to change because valid at time printed).
arcticbull 9y ago
It's interesting that since 2008, almost a decade ago, basically nothing has changed with respect to boarding pass layout and design.
- icebraining 9y ago
  For reference, here's Ryanair's current paper boarding pass: http://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/RyanairQuad2.jpg http://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017... I find it quite usable.
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  I'd disagree, only in that new passes always list boarding time in addition to departure time. They also tend to use better layout in general.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  I'd like an electronic boarding pass, with a countdown on it.
- taejo 9y ago
  I recently had the information for three legs of a flight (on three airlines). That's an innovation, AFAICT.
icebraining 9y ago
It's interesting that the pass has the boarding gate printed on it. I've only flown in Europe (and only started around six years ago), but the gates are available only half-hour or so from the closing time. Is it common in the US to know the gate in advance?
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  Almost always. It's nice because the terminals can be rather large and if you're going to grab a meal prior to departure, you'd want to go to a restaurant that is near the departure gate. Also, different gates used by the same airline are sometimes in totally disjoint post-security areas. Are these things not problems in Europe?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    In the airports I've been to, I don't remember the restaurants being near the gates, but all together in a food court. So I guess you can't really grab a meal near the gate anyway. As for the security, not really, in my limited experience. My home town's airport does have two separate terminals, with independent security areas, but different airlines fly from each.
  - switch007 9y ago
    It can be a small problem. Sometimes you're given a zone. Frequent flyers learn which ones are used most often.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    Europe has airports ranging from some of the world's biggest (LHR, CDG) to some of the smallest. At some airports, all flights will be international (e.g. Shannon). At others, all flights will be domestic or within Schengen. Some airports are almost entirely used by budget airlines (London Luton), others have very few budget airline flights (London Heathrow). That leaves plenty of flexibility for how the airport is operated. I'd expect a gate printed on the boarding pass as the larger airports with longer, non-EU flights. I'm not surprised when a Ryanair flight only announces the gate a short time before departure, since they have such a short turn-around time everything seems to be last-minute.
1_2__4 9y ago
Title should include date for a 2010 blog post.
jerkstate 9y ago
I think the new design is worse than the old design. Not a fan of the narrow font, crowding, and tiny labels (following, not leading, the numbers) for category. Am I flying from gate 22A in seat 11B or vice versa? The labels for what the number IS should be nearly the same size as the number itself. The departure time is listed, but the boarding time is not. The boarding time is more critical to know.
- howderek 9y ago
  I totally agree. The text was hard to read. I thought that Timoni West's design was much better than what exists today, however.
- isostatic 9y ago
  > The departure time is listed, but the boarding time is not. The boarding time is more critical to know. I disagree. Airlines often lie about boarding times - the number of passes I've seen where the boarding time is 1 hour before takeoff. At some airports I'm still in bed 1 hour before takeoff!
kwhitefoot 9y ago
What for? I mean why do you need one? Most of the flights I take in Scandinavia don't have boarding passes I just use the credit card I used to buy the ticket. If a boarding pass is needed I can get it in the form of a QR code on my mobile when I check in online.
- jayshua 9y ago
  I personally avoid the mobile app. I have no data plan on my phone, and airport WiFi is not exactly known as the best (or safest). I also have this (probably unfounded) fear of my battery failing and having to go through a bunch of extra effort to get a printed one anyway.
  - kornakiewicz 9y ago
    I always make a screenshot of mobile boarding card, plus additional one with full-size QR code. Or just keep one as pdf.
  - denzil_correa 9y ago
    You don't need data for the boarding pass on the Wallet App on iOS. Once added, it's done.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I think it's useful for people who don't speak a local language -- the standard-ish format is easier to handle than an app or website.
usaphp 9y ago
I like it, I think it's more readable compared to the one that they show as a current one on the top. It took me a while to find a departure time and gate number on the original boarding pass. All the important pieces like flight number, seat and departure time are really easy to read compared to the original. The problem on the original is that they don't emphasize the important information pieces, all is printed in the same font style and size.
- dieselz 9y ago
  I really dislike comments that are negative about design when someone has spent a lot of time researching the problem and the commenter has not. With that said, here is me doing that exact thing: I agree with usaphp. With equal visual hierarchy, it's dismissing the fact that you care about some items 0% of the time and some items 100% of the time. And this difference between these states can change in minutes. For example, I don't care at all what my seat assignment is until I'm on the plane. I don't care at all what zone I'm boarding until I'm at the gate. I don't care at all what gate it says because gates change all the time. Even if I used mobile kiosk for check-in and it gives me a gate, there's a non-trivial chance that by the time I get to the terminal, that gate has changed. I do not rely on the gate assignment on my boarding pass, ever. Similar items are not grouped when they should be: such as boarding time and gate. And the font is not glance-able. It's a nice font that takes little width, but unless they start changing code share codes to "DL50,381,172", there's a ton of extra space that could be used. (of course whitespace is valuable too, but squishing information together for the sake of squishing it together is not a wise design decision. Regarding someone's comment about color/shitty printers - this kind of design would require two designs: one b/w and one color. The strength of the reds and blues would take over the important information.
chx 9y ago
Let's look at this from a tired traveler perspective. Not sure whether you had the joy of being on the other end of a transoceanic flight but typically by that time you have been up for too long, stressed from packing, passing security, immigration then sitting 10-12-16 hours in an overpressurized dry aluminium tube. Your brain wants to shut down. You are staring at this piece of paper which has the flight number, the gate number and the seat number in roughly the same size, the same font and in every which way visually the same. I did get dangerously close to mixing up my gate with my seat. More than once. It's an atrociously bad design. And it's not that hard to improve. All it needs is more folds. First fold, flight / gate. You don't give a shit about seat so hide it. This doesn't require new printers , new standards or shit. Just one more fold in the paper. Is that so hard?
cbhl 9y ago
The main issue I have with this design is that it doesn't account for the cost of implementing the proposed changes. For paper boarding passes, it's prohibitively expensive to upgrade the printers and self-check-in kiosks to support new-fangled boarding pass layouts. Plus, you have to do it at every airport around the world. It would be far cheaper to have some professionally printed full-color paper templates to feed into the printers (see, for example, Virgin America boarding passes issued at SFO). Plus, iPhone Passbook tickets are uniformly designed, and have the key information (seat number, boarding time) in slightly bigger bold font at the top. It would be far cheaper to get an airline to install eTicket readers (aka QR code scanners) at the few small airports that don't have them, and then to upgrade their mobile apps to support generating Apple Passbook boarding passes for the remaining ticket types that don't work (e.g. group fares).
ahmedfromtunis 9y ago
I like that we are integrating more and more well designed products and utilities in our day to day life; beautiful, easy to use objects are no longer a luxury. That by itself is a glorious win. People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: "Form follows Functionality". I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place. Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn't. The reason I'm saying this is because I suffer those atrocities every day in my work, were I'm tasked with the coordination between journalists and designers for a business magazine. Where I work, we believe that infographics' main mission is to help readers wrap their heads around things they wouldn't if we presented them as text or tables. That's the point of them being there in the first place. Making them pretty is just a way to make people look at them, and be happy while they learn something new. It is so satisfying to create such pieces. Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece. I really hope that people will be more aware that design is not a goal by itself; it's a tool to make people care, learn and be more happy. Edit: OMGrammar!
- et-al 9y ago
  > Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece. I suspect a lot of designers are really just designing for dribbble/Behance portfolios so they can finally climb the ladder to Art Director.
  - ahmedfromtunis 9y ago
    Absolutely, and that somehow makes me sad. I hope that the designers who don't yet, understand the grandiosity of their mission and give a goal to their pieces, beyond the instant gratification of fast rotting eye candy.
Pxtl 9y ago
I dislike his redesign, because most of what he does is fix the fact that it's ugly. Large-printing the numbers is pointless when the labels are still teeny-tiny and the layout of the tearable stub doesn't match so it's non-obvious that it contains the same info. Imho, the tearaway should clearly repeat the layout of the big one so the reader can see "this is the same". I'd sort the data in order. Putting the zone at the end is wrong because you don't use it after the seat. First you need flight number and time, then you gate days where to go, then your zone says where to go, then your seat says where to go. It seems obvious to sort the data like that.
- et-al 9y ago
  > I'd sort the data in order. Yeah, I liked Julian Montoya's design the most because its vertical layout immediately conveys a hierarchy of data (though the gate number is omitted). The other designs, while aesthetically novel, required my eyes to jump around to gleam meaningful information.
  - Pxtl 9y ago
    My problem with Montoya's design is that he used 3 letter abbreviations for the cities... You need the full name. 3 letter airport abbreviations are jargon that should not be the core of user-facing interaction.
    - dx034 9y ago
      They can be important. It's important to know if you're flying to LHR or LGW (for London), esp if you're at an airport where planes of the same airline leave to both. Identifying the flight by flight number is often problematic if it's a codeshare flight (displays at the airport only show one or switch infrequently), so identifying by airport and flight time is easier.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Putting the zone at the end is actually OK for humans; It's an edge. It could even be distanced a little from it with some small 'zone' text.
agwa 9y ago
A far better attempt at redesigning the boarding pass was done by Timoni West: http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-pass-redesign http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-p... Unlike the author of this post, West actually endeavored to understand the constraints and requirements before undertaking a redesign. That's the mark of a truly competent designer.
- soared 9y ago
  This is listed at the end of the author's page fyi, he lists a bunch of other people's designs.
soared 9y ago
Thoughts on having one "website" for a blog post? I think its kind of cool - gives more weight to the post. But it definitely creates a disconnect between the author and the post.. I can't navigate to the author's site for other work, or to find this blog post again, etc.
manigandham 9y ago
I find the tall skinny letters are much harder to read and random elements like the country map just add clutter. Giant color backgrounds are also distracting and probably make printing more expensive while lowering quality for people who print passes at home. Overall I prefer existing boarding passes, which aren't actually that complicated these days. Also many people now use digital passes on their mobile phones that are much easier to use with built-in intelligence and real-time updates.
tomjn 9y ago
I really like the human text design, it's the only one that's a real improvement and easy to process. I feel a lot of the others are swapping practicality for looking like an infrographic, prettier but just as difficult to process
amelius 9y ago
Can't we get rid of the boarding pass altogether? I mean, I'm always carrying two things around the airport: my passport and the boarding pass. I think this can be reduced to one thing: just my passport, by letting the airport deal with boarding electronically.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >I think this can be reduced to one thing: just my passport, by letting the airport deal with boarding electronically. What if you don't have a passport? Add a smartphone dependency?
  - eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
    credit card? driving license?
    - saryant 9y ago
      Not everyone is flying on a ticket they paid for. And children don't have drivers licenses.
aembleton 9y ago
Why don't you just use an app that displays the barcode? It's been a while since I've boarded a flight using a paper ticket.
- techbubble 9y ago
  If you have checked luggage, they print boarding passes for you and stick the baggage tag labels on the pass. At that point you have a paper pass so using the mobile one doesn't make much sense. Also, if you are traveling internationally, the boarding pass is mandatory for the various security and immigration stamps.
oliv__ 9y ago
The first thing I couldn't help but notice was how much ink these new designs would use! That seems like a major design flaw for an industry with such tight margins.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- huac 9y ago
  Plus, white on black gives a dope contrast but that's real expensive to print at scale.
noonespecial 9y ago
>This is the actual boarding pass I got from Delta. It's a nightmare. Note all the random alignments and spacing issues. What on earth made him assume that these alignments and spaces were random? I bet the scanners that read them think they're gorgeous.
zkms 9y ago
The paper itself is another problem with modern boarding passes. I miss the old-style boarding passes (the kind you'd find a magnetic strip on), when they were printed on thick cardstock (that wouldn't rip if you put them in a pocket or in between the pages of your passport) and not the thin and squicky BPA-infused thermal paper that almost rips on its own.
- dnh44 9y ago
  I still get the thick card stock ones fairly often I think it just depends what airport and airline maybe.
mattmurdog 9y ago
"So I took out my Moleskine and started sketching." You lost me with your hipster pretentiousness.
mbrookes 9y ago
This article is from 2010. The "designer"* loses credibility for not having a date on his blog post (at least the boarding cards have that). *Using a bigger typeface is "design"?!
ginko 9y ago
I know KLM recently introduced boarding documents you can print and fold four-ways so that it was pretty much the size of your passport and if you have a two-flight connection there would be one on each side. The overall details are pretty well laid out as well. I'd post an example, but the only one I have is my own boarding pass, so that's not really an option.
- martin-adams 9y ago
  I quite like the idea of folding it so that you only see your next immediate step at a time. For example, first step is gate number and time to be there. When you're there, you fold it over and it shows you your seat number.
- joe5150 9y ago
  Virgin America's are similar[1] and I really liked the way they did it. 1: https://www.subtraction.com/2014/10/13/virgin-america-boarding-pass/ https://www.subtraction.com/2014/10/13/virgin-america-boardi...
justicezyx 9y ago
Designer should understand that boarding pass at today, should no longer be designed, instead, software should be written to handle those things automatically. The technology to automate boarding is already there and are very mature.
- martin-adams 9y ago
  Not sure I fully understand what you're concluding. If it's handled automatically, how do you get the passengers at the right gate, at the right time and in the right seat?
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    Google now already can infer those information from emails. Just pass a UID of the ticket information, and any decent software company and given you phone app that automate everything...
    - martin-adams 9y ago
      Right, so essentially pushing the presentation of information to third parties. I understand what you mean now, thank you.
ada1981 9y ago
Apple Wallet does a pretty good job of displaying boarding passes. No ink, no paper, and easy for me to read.
Exuma 9y ago
The design is worse to me. Black background for reading is a bad idea, and there's a lot of things competing for attention because everything is so big. They could do with better font too... way too hard to read and thin. White background + gotham font + white background + proper spacing + a splash of color = win
ricardobeat 9y ago
This is the boarding pass for the last flight I took: https://s1.postimg.org/7z1w2wwm7/IMG_0048.jpg https://s1.postimg.org/7z1w2wwm7/IMG_0048.jpg It has some of the changes seen in his redesign, but still a lot closer to the original one from Delta. I think it's perfectly fine and practical, despite not being exactly visually pleasant; all the information I care about is in big bold letters at the top, without any strange codes or abbreviations.
lathiat 9y ago
Meanwhile for Qantas in Australia on domestic flights, you just tap your frequent flyer card to check-in and scan it's barcode at the gate to board. It does print a small slip with your seat allocation on it at that point though. Now someone just has to build e-Ink into the card.. which I know has at least partly been done by some of those virtual credit card startups.
DerSaidin 9y ago
I'd like for boarding passes to fit in my passport without folding them or hanging out.
tigereyeTO 9y ago
It's great that so much thought has been put into the design that is printed on boarding passes, but one thing that's always bothered me about them is the physical size. Every passport is the same size, and you almost always are carrying your passport while flying. If boarding passes were the same size as passports, they'd fit inside much more easily and make it a lot more convenient to carry. Sure, the design printed on the paper is important too, but IMHO the size of the pass is far more important!
- closeparen 9y ago
  >you almost always are carrying your passport while flying. What? Flying internationally is a rare event even for rich people (business travelers excepted). Most of us will do it a handful of times, or not at all. I'd estimate the vast majority of flights to be domestic. You just use the photo ID that's already in your wallet. If you don't want to carry an additional object, just put it in Passbook on your phone using the airline's app.
Taniwha 9y ago
There's a purely practical thing that these need to deal with: sometimes when you board you hand over the end stub and keep the large portion, and sometimes you hand over the large portion and are given the stub .... This means that all (or enough) information needs to be on both bits .... You can't just put the seat number on one bit (or the flight number on one bit, as you may need it for customs forms later) etc etc
deathanatos 9y ago
As someone with a suffix in their name, I'd like if the name portion could just stop corrupting my name. IIRC, the last airline took: First Name: John Middle Initial: Q Last Name: Smith Suffix: III as input (in separate fields!, and in the above order) and printed that as: JOHNIII SMITH Q Note the lack of space separating the given name and the suffix, the odd positioning and ordering of all of the elements of the name…. This is nowhere close to how its represented on my legal ID, and I've never in my life written my name that way. Then you take this boarding pass to security, where a TSA agent squints at it thinking to himself "this is definitely fake", until the barcode scans and it comes back as good.
sneak 9y ago
ffs stop using 12h time
Principe 9y ago
Boarding passes used to be on glossy cardstock with preprinted designs and lots of color. Now they're basically thermal printed on receipt paper because it's cheaper. Depending on your airline and class of travel, sometimes you can still get a nice boarding pass.

122 points by skanderbm 9y ago

One thing that these types of articles tend to overlook is consistency across the different types of boarding passes. You have home printed boarding passes that will be printed on all sorts of awful printers, with bad settings (like printing color to a b/w printer) and poor resolution. Then, some will be printed on thermal printers at airports, and some on airport controlled thermal printers, some on airline controlled thermal printers. Different models, with different stock, etc. Finally, the mobile boarding passes. The employees checking these do better if there's some uniformity across the various formats. Similar for customers. So, there is a bit of "lowest common denominator" in the current designs. It's on purpose.

Nullabillity 9y ago
Meh, the employees will just scan the barcode and look at their computer anyway.
- tyingq 9y ago
  The gate agent can do that. Flight attendants can't. Same for the ticket counter.
  - Nullabillity 9y ago
    I guess that depends on where you're flying from. The only airport in the last couple of years where I've even had a boarding pass was RIX, otherwise it's always just stored on the frequent flier card.

davemtl 9y ago

Although this blog post is a few years old, I'd like to shed a little light onto why boarding passes haven't changed in years. To redesign the boarding pass, you have to understand how the data is processed and presented. Often the terminals and printers are shared between airlines, so there has to be a standard. Each airline uses something called a PECTAB. This a basically a template that has coordinates of where the data is to be printed (text & logo). It's loaded on the printer each time the airline terminal application (such as Sabre, Amadeaus, etc.) connects to the CUTE (Common Use Terminal Emulator, IATA standard) API hosted on the computer which acts as a gateway to the printers, OCR scanner, etc. Did I mention this is a shared terminal by several airlines that have completely different applications? :) A lot of the BTP (boarding pass) printers either use the older dot style printing, but the newer thermal (GPP) printers are becoming more common because they are cheaper to maintain. Unfortunately, the terminal emulators and CUTE standard hasn't kept up to date with the available technology, a lot airlines are still running on mainframes from 25+ years ago.

tyingq 9y ago
Great comment, and informative, but... >a lot airlines are still running on mainframes from 25+ years ago That's really not related to this topic at all. The TPF mainframes have little to do with how the boarding pass looks. That functionality is in other systems/code. The TPF mainframe for most airlines at this point is just a big nosql database, surrounded by a bunch of other systems that aren't old. If you replaced it, the customer facing stuff wouldn't look or act much differently. The sprawl of the applications around it, and the lack of consistency across those is actually a bigger problem than the TPF mainframe.
naner 9y ago
I remember reading this similar (though not as polite) criticism in 2010: https://ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-like/ https://ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-lik...
ricardobeat 9y ago
See my other comment - they have actually changed a bit, and it's perfectly possible to produce better designs with the existing tech (not the colorful ones though).
blantonl 9y ago
That doesn’t make any sense, considering the use of mobile device boarding passes. My guess is there is a bridge developed to translate those boarding passes to PECTAB format for submission to common systems?

pinaceae 9y ago

this is so old (2008, with updates till 2010). why is this up again? must have been on HN multiple times now.

dewey 9y ago
Because enough people found it interesting enough to upvote.
hk__2 9y ago
> must have been on HN multiple times now. It has been posted 8 years ago [1], then again twice 7 years ago [2,3], then 3 years ago [4]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1029181 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1278476 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549613 [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7791097
icebraining 9y ago
xkcd: Ten Thousand. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I rest my case.

techbubble 9y ago

I wish someone would add the departure time (origin TZ), flight duration, arrival time (origin TZ) and arrival time (destination TZ).

robaato 9y ago
Amen brother. I often ring to get a taxi to meet me at the arrival - with current design I have to look it up separately as opposed to on boarding pass... Also an indication of predicted flight time is really useful (even if subject to change because valid at time printed).

arcticbull 9y ago

It's interesting that since 2008, almost a decade ago, basically nothing has changed with respect to boarding pass layout and design.

icebraining 9y ago
For reference, here's Ryanair's current paper boarding pass: http://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/RyanairQuad2.jpg http://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017... I find it quite usable.
1_2__4 9y ago
I'd disagree, only in that new passes always list boarding time in addition to departure time. They also tend to use better layout in general.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
I'd like an electronic boarding pass, with a countdown on it.
taejo 9y ago
I recently had the information for three legs of a flight (on three airlines). That's an innovation, AFAICT.

icebraining 9y ago

It's interesting that the pass has the boarding gate printed on it. I've only flown in Europe (and only started around six years ago), but the gates are available only half-hour or so from the closing time. Is it common in the US to know the gate in advance?

marcoperaza 9y ago
Almost always. It's nice because the terminals can be rather large and if you're going to grab a meal prior to departure, you'd want to go to a restaurant that is near the departure gate. Also, different gates used by the same airline are sometimes in totally disjoint post-security areas. Are these things not problems in Europe?
- icebraining 9y ago
  In the airports I've been to, I don't remember the restaurants being near the gates, but all together in a food court. So I guess you can't really grab a meal near the gate anyway. As for the security, not really, in my limited experience. My home town's airport does have two separate terminals, with independent security areas, but different airlines fly from each.
- switch007 9y ago
  It can be a small problem. Sometimes you're given a zone. Frequent flyers learn which ones are used most often.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Europe has airports ranging from some of the world's biggest (LHR, CDG) to some of the smallest. At some airports, all flights will be international (e.g. Shannon). At others, all flights will be domestic or within Schengen. Some airports are almost entirely used by budget airlines (London Luton), others have very few budget airline flights (London Heathrow). That leaves plenty of flexibility for how the airport is operated. I'd expect a gate printed on the boarding pass as the larger airports with longer, non-EU flights. I'm not surprised when a Ryanair flight only announces the gate a short time before departure, since they have such a short turn-around time everything seems to be last-minute.

1_2__4 9y ago

Title should include date for a 2010 blog post.

jerkstate 9y ago

I think the new design is worse than the old design. Not a fan of the narrow font, crowding, and tiny labels (following, not leading, the numbers) for category. Am I flying from gate 22A in seat 11B or vice versa? The labels for what the number IS should be nearly the same size as the number itself. The departure time is listed, but the boarding time is not. The boarding time is more critical to know.

howderek 9y ago
I totally agree. The text was hard to read. I thought that Timoni West's design was much better than what exists today, however.
isostatic 9y ago
> The departure time is listed, but the boarding time is not. The boarding time is more critical to know. I disagree. Airlines often lie about boarding times - the number of passes I've seen where the boarding time is 1 hour before takeoff. At some airports I'm still in bed 1 hour before takeoff!

kwhitefoot 9y ago

What for? I mean why do you need one? Most of the flights I take in Scandinavia don't have boarding passes I just use the credit card I used to buy the ticket. If a boarding pass is needed I can get it in the form of a QR code on my mobile when I check in online.

jayshua 9y ago
I personally avoid the mobile app. I have no data plan on my phone, and airport WiFi is not exactly known as the best (or safest). I also have this (probably unfounded) fear of my battery failing and having to go through a bunch of extra effort to get a printed one anyway.
- kornakiewicz 9y ago
  I always make a screenshot of mobile boarding card, plus additional one with full-size QR code. Or just keep one as pdf.
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  You don't need data for the boarding pass on the Wallet App on iOS. Once added, it's done.
Symbiote 9y ago
I think it's useful for people who don't speak a local language -- the standard-ish format is easier to handle than an app or website.

usaphp 9y ago

I like it, I think it's more readable compared to the one that they show as a current one on the top. It took me a while to find a departure time and gate number on the original boarding pass. All the important pieces like flight number, seat and departure time are really easy to read compared to the original. The problem on the original is that they don't emphasize the important information pieces, all is printed in the same font style and size.

dieselz 9y ago
I really dislike comments that are negative about design when someone has spent a lot of time researching the problem and the commenter has not. With that said, here is me doing that exact thing: I agree with usaphp. With equal visual hierarchy, it's dismissing the fact that you care about some items 0% of the time and some items 100% of the time. And this difference between these states can change in minutes. For example, I don't care at all what my seat assignment is until I'm on the plane. I don't care at all what zone I'm boarding until I'm at the gate. I don't care at all what gate it says because gates change all the time. Even if I used mobile kiosk for check-in and it gives me a gate, there's a non-trivial chance that by the time I get to the terminal, that gate has changed. I do not rely on the gate assignment on my boarding pass, ever. Similar items are not grouped when they should be: such as boarding time and gate. And the font is not glance-able. It's a nice font that takes little width, but unless they start changing code share codes to "DL50,381,172", there's a ton of extra space that could be used. (of course whitespace is valuable too, but squishing information together for the sake of squishing it together is not a wise design decision. Regarding someone's comment about color/shitty printers - this kind of design would require two designs: one b/w and one color. The strength of the reds and blues would take over the important information.

chx 9y ago

Let's look at this from a tired traveler perspective. Not sure whether you had the joy of being on the other end of a transoceanic flight but typically by that time you have been up for too long, stressed from packing, passing security, immigration then sitting 10-12-16 hours in an overpressurized dry aluminium tube. Your brain wants to shut down. You are staring at this piece of paper which has the flight number, the gate number and the seat number in roughly the same size, the same font and in every which way visually the same. I did get dangerously close to mixing up my gate with my seat. More than once. It's an atrociously bad design. And it's not that hard to improve. All it needs is more folds. First fold, flight / gate. You don't give a shit about seat so hide it. This doesn't require new printers , new standards or shit. Just one more fold in the paper. Is that so hard?

cbhl 9y ago

The main issue I have with this design is that it doesn't account for the cost of implementing the proposed changes. For paper boarding passes, it's prohibitively expensive to upgrade the printers and self-check-in kiosks to support new-fangled boarding pass layouts. Plus, you have to do it at every airport around the world. It would be far cheaper to have some professionally printed full-color paper templates to feed into the printers (see, for example, Virgin America boarding passes issued at SFO). Plus, iPhone Passbook tickets are uniformly designed, and have the key information (seat number, boarding time) in slightly bigger bold font at the top. It would be far cheaper to get an airline to install eTicket readers (aka QR code scanners) at the few small airports that don't have them, and then to upgrade their mobile apps to support generating Apple Passbook boarding passes for the remaining ticket types that don't work (e.g. group fares).

ahmedfromtunis 9y ago

I like that we are integrating more and more well designed products and utilities in our day to day life; beautiful, easy to use objects are no longer a luxury. That by itself is a glorious win. People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: "Form follows Functionality". I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place. Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn't. The reason I'm saying this is because I suffer those atrocities every day in my work, were I'm tasked with the coordination between journalists and designers for a business magazine. Where I work, we believe that infographics' main mission is to help readers wrap their heads around things they wouldn't if we presented them as text or tables. That's the point of them being there in the first place. Making them pretty is just a way to make people look at them, and be happy while they learn something new. It is so satisfying to create such pieces. Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece. I really hope that people will be more aware that design is not a goal by itself; it's a tool to make people care, learn and be more happy. Edit: OMGrammar!

et-al 9y ago
> Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece. I suspect a lot of designers are really just designing for dribbble/Behance portfolios so they can finally climb the ladder to Art Director.
- ahmedfromtunis 9y ago
  Absolutely, and that somehow makes me sad. I hope that the designers who don't yet, understand the grandiosity of their mission and give a goal to their pieces, beyond the instant gratification of fast rotting eye candy.

Pxtl 9y ago

I dislike his redesign, because most of what he does is fix the fact that it's ugly. Large-printing the numbers is pointless when the labels are still teeny-tiny and the layout of the tearable stub doesn't match so it's non-obvious that it contains the same info. Imho, the tearaway should clearly repeat the layout of the big one so the reader can see "this is the same". I'd sort the data in order. Putting the zone at the end is wrong because you don't use it after the seat. First you need flight number and time, then you gate days where to go, then your zone says where to go, then your seat says where to go. It seems obvious to sort the data like that.

et-al 9y ago
> I'd sort the data in order. Yeah, I liked Julian Montoya's design the most because its vertical layout immediately conveys a hierarchy of data (though the gate number is omitted). The other designs, while aesthetically novel, required my eyes to jump around to gleam meaningful information.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  My problem with Montoya's design is that he used 3 letter abbreviations for the cities... You need the full name. 3 letter airport abbreviations are jargon that should not be the core of user-facing interaction.
  - dx034 9y ago
    They can be important. It's important to know if you're flying to LHR or LGW (for London), esp if you're at an airport where planes of the same airline leave to both. Identifying the flight by flight number is often problematic if it's a codeshare flight (displays at the airport only show one or switch infrequently), so identifying by airport and flight time is easier.
mjevans 9y ago
Putting the zone at the end is actually OK for humans; It's an edge. It could even be distanced a little from it with some small 'zone' text.

agwa 9y ago

A far better attempt at redesigning the boarding pass was done by Timoni West: http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-pass-redesign http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-p... Unlike the author of this post, West actually endeavored to understand the constraints and requirements before undertaking a redesign. That's the mark of a truly competent designer.

soared 9y ago
This is listed at the end of the author's page fyi, he lists a bunch of other people's designs.

soared 9y ago

Thoughts on having one "website" for a blog post? I think its kind of cool - gives more weight to the post. But it definitely creates a disconnect between the author and the post.. I can't navigate to the author's site for other work, or to find this blog post again, etc.

manigandham 9y ago

I find the tall skinny letters are much harder to read and random elements like the country map just add clutter. Giant color backgrounds are also distracting and probably make printing more expensive while lowering quality for people who print passes at home. Overall I prefer existing boarding passes, which aren't actually that complicated these days. Also many people now use digital passes on their mobile phones that are much easier to use with built-in intelligence and real-time updates.

tomjn 9y ago

I really like the human text design, it's the only one that's a real improvement and easy to process. I feel a lot of the others are swapping practicality for looking like an infrographic, prettier but just as difficult to process

amelius 9y ago

Can't we get rid of the boarding pass altogether? I mean, I'm always carrying two things around the airport: my passport and the boarding pass. I think this can be reduced to one thing: just my passport, by letting the airport deal with boarding electronically.

icelancer 9y ago
>I think this can be reduced to one thing: just my passport, by letting the airport deal with boarding electronically. What if you don't have a passport? Add a smartphone dependency?
- eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
  credit card? driving license?
  - saryant 9y ago
    Not everyone is flying on a ticket they paid for. And children don't have drivers licenses.

aembleton 9y ago

Why don't you just use an app that displays the barcode? It's been a while since I've boarded a flight using a paper ticket.

techbubble 9y ago
If you have checked luggage, they print boarding passes for you and stick the baggage tag labels on the pass. At that point you have a paper pass so using the mobile one doesn't make much sense. Also, if you are traveling internationally, the boarding pass is mandatory for the various security and immigration stamps.

oliv__ 9y ago

The first thing I couldn't help but notice was how much ink these new designs would use! That seems like a major design flaw for an industry with such tight margins.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
huac 9y ago
Plus, white on black gives a dope contrast but that's real expensive to print at scale.

noonespecial 9y ago

>This is the actual boarding pass I got from Delta. It's a nightmare. Note all the random alignments and spacing issues. What on earth made him assume that these alignments and spaces were random? I bet the scanners that read them think they're gorgeous.

zkms 9y ago

The paper itself is another problem with modern boarding passes. I miss the old-style boarding passes (the kind you'd find a magnetic strip on), when they were printed on thick cardstock (that wouldn't rip if you put them in a pocket or in between the pages of your passport) and not the thin and squicky BPA-infused thermal paper that almost rips on its own.

dnh44 9y ago
I still get the thick card stock ones fairly often I think it just depends what airport and airline maybe.

mattmurdog 9y ago

"So I took out my Moleskine and started sketching." You lost me with your hipster pretentiousness.

mbrookes 9y ago

This article is from 2010. The "designer"* loses credibility for not having a date on his blog post (at least the boarding cards have that). *Using a bigger typeface is "design"?!

ginko 9y ago

I know KLM recently introduced boarding documents you can print and fold four-ways so that it was pretty much the size of your passport and if you have a two-flight connection there would be one on each side. The overall details are pretty well laid out as well. I'd post an example, but the only one I have is my own boarding pass, so that's not really an option.

martin-adams 9y ago
I quite like the idea of folding it so that you only see your next immediate step at a time. For example, first step is gate number and time to be there. When you're there, you fold it over and it shows you your seat number.
joe5150 9y ago
Virgin America's are similar[1] and I really liked the way they did it. 1: https://www.subtraction.com/2014/10/13/virgin-america-boarding-pass/ https://www.subtraction.com/2014/10/13/virgin-america-boardi...

justicezyx 9y ago

Designer should understand that boarding pass at today, should no longer be designed, instead, software should be written to handle those things automatically. The technology to automate boarding is already there and are very mature.

martin-adams 9y ago
Not sure I fully understand what you're concluding. If it's handled automatically, how do you get the passengers at the right gate, at the right time and in the right seat?
- justicezyx 9y ago
  Google now already can infer those information from emails. Just pass a UID of the ticket information, and any decent software company and given you phone app that automate everything...
  - martin-adams 9y ago
    Right, so essentially pushing the presentation of information to third parties. I understand what you mean now, thank you.

ada1981 9y ago

Apple Wallet does a pretty good job of displaying boarding passes. No ink, no paper, and easy for me to read.

Exuma 9y ago

The design is worse to me. Black background for reading is a bad idea, and there's a lot of things competing for attention because everything is so big. They could do with better font too... way too hard to read and thin. White background + gotham font + white background + proper spacing + a splash of color = win

ricardobeat 9y ago

This is the boarding pass for the last flight I took: https://s1.postimg.org/7z1w2wwm7/IMG_0048.jpg https://s1.postimg.org/7z1w2wwm7/IMG_0048.jpg It has some of the changes seen in his redesign, but still a lot closer to the original one from Delta. I think it's perfectly fine and practical, despite not being exactly visually pleasant; all the information I care about is in big bold letters at the top, without any strange codes or abbreviations.

lathiat 9y ago

Meanwhile for Qantas in Australia on domestic flights, you just tap your frequent flyer card to check-in and scan it's barcode at the gate to board. It does print a small slip with your seat allocation on it at that point though. Now someone just has to build e-Ink into the card.. which I know has at least partly been done by some of those virtual credit card startups.

DerSaidin 9y ago

I'd like for boarding passes to fit in my passport without folding them or hanging out.

tigereyeTO 9y ago

It's great that so much thought has been put into the design that is printed on boarding passes, but one thing that's always bothered me about them is the physical size. Every passport is the same size, and you almost always are carrying your passport while flying. If boarding passes were the same size as passports, they'd fit inside much more easily and make it a lot more convenient to carry. Sure, the design printed on the paper is important too, but IMHO the size of the pass is far more important!

closeparen 9y ago
>you almost always are carrying your passport while flying. What? Flying internationally is a rare event even for rich people (business travelers excepted). Most of us will do it a handful of times, or not at all. I'd estimate the vast majority of flights to be domestic. You just use the photo ID that's already in your wallet. If you don't want to carry an additional object, just put it in Passbook on your phone using the airline's app.

Taniwha 9y ago

There's a purely practical thing that these need to deal with: sometimes when you board you hand over the end stub and keep the large portion, and sometimes you hand over the large portion and are given the stub .... This means that all (or enough) information needs to be on both bits .... You can't just put the seat number on one bit (or the flight number on one bit, as you may need it for customs forms later) etc etc

deathanatos 9y ago

As someone with a suffix in their name, I'd like if the name portion could just stop corrupting my name. IIRC, the last airline took: First Name: John Middle Initial: Q Last Name: Smith Suffix: III as input (in separate fields!, and in the above order) and printed that as: JOHNIII SMITH Q Note the lack of space separating the given name and the suffix, the odd positioning and ordering of all of the elements of the name…. This is nowhere close to how its represented on my legal ID, and I've never in my life written my name that way. Then you take this boarding pass to security, where a TSA agent squints at it thinking to himself "this is definitely fake", until the barcode scans and it comes back as good.

sneak 9y ago

ffs stop using 12h time

Principe 9y ago

Boarding passes used to be on glossy cardstock with preprinted designs and lots of color. Now they're basically thermal printed on receipt paper because it's cheaper. Depending on your airline and class of travel, sometimes you can still get a nice boarding pass.