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But the tech would have helped in this case: the flight attendent saw that the pass was already scanned, "assumed it was a glitch" and let the real ticket holde

But the tech would have helped in this case: the flight attendent saw that the pass was already scanned, "assumed it was a glitch" and let the real ticket holder on. If that system showed a quick pic of the person who previously boarded, I doubt they would have done this.

paul7986 3y ago
Present day TSA doesn't check boarding passes when going thru security just scan your license.
- criddell 3y ago
  They do check that you have a boarding pass but they don't need you to present one. Your identification is all that's needed.
- lxgr 3y ago
  As I understand it, the data is linked in the background in some airports, i.e. they just check if there's any boarding pass in your name (and presumably date of birth to disambiguate; most if not all airlines collect it nowadays) in the system.
  - pxx 3y ago
    They check for exactly one bp for the happy case. If it's zero or 2+, they ask for a boarding pass.
- pxx 3y ago
  They do if you have multiple valid boarding passes leaving that airport the same day. The flow is present ID -> machine says "multiple flights, scan bp for one of them"
dmurray 3y ago
If the system worked as you propose, but regularly glitches, it would show someone's picture when it glitched. The check-in staff wouldn't see anything weird about this particular person's photo: he's not otherwise noteworthy. Maybe it would be the person with the seat number from a previous flight. The attendant assumed it was a glitch because it usually is a glitch. The official policy is that there are no glitches and that the staff member should have called security and investigated the plane. The actual policy from middle management is "if you do this you will end up calling security 30 times a day because our systems suck and half our flights would be delayed, so just use your judgment until the technical issue is fixed". Here they really do need a technical solution to a technical problem. Improve the tech so it has false positives on less than say 0.1% of flights. Then you can enforce the official policy and discipline staff members and/or their managers if they don't follow it.
- lupire 3y ago
  Why are you assuming glitches exist? Maybe all the glitches are actually stowaways.
- MobiusHorizons 3y ago
  The glitches wouldn’t be arbitrary like that. There is no need to assume a data corruption issue or anything like that to explain the glitches. It’s much more likely in my opinion, that the system regularly receives bad input due to people behaving in ways it wasn’t able to track. For example not scanning, double scanning because the attendant was moving the scanner around rapidly, people needing to exit the line due to one member of a larger party (eg a child or spouse) having a problem after part of the group had already been scanned.

paul7986 3y ago

Present day TSA doesn't check boarding passes when going thru security just scan your license.

criddell 3y ago
They do check that you have a boarding pass but they don't need you to present one. Your identification is all that's needed.
lxgr 3y ago
As I understand it, the data is linked in the background in some airports, i.e. they just check if there's any boarding pass in your name (and presumably date of birth to disambiguate; most if not all airlines collect it nowadays) in the system.
- pxx 3y ago
  They check for exactly one bp for the happy case. If it's zero or 2+, they ask for a boarding pass.
pxx 3y ago
They do if you have multiple valid boarding passes leaving that airport the same day. The flow is present ID -> machine says "multiple flights, scan bp for one of them"

dmurray 3y ago

If the system worked as you propose, but regularly glitches, it would show someone's picture when it glitched. The check-in staff wouldn't see anything weird about this particular person's photo: he's not otherwise noteworthy. Maybe it would be the person with the seat number from a previous flight. The attendant assumed it was a glitch because it usually is a glitch. The official policy is that there are no glitches and that the staff member should have called security and investigated the plane. The actual policy from middle management is "if you do this you will end up calling security 30 times a day because our systems suck and half our flights would be delayed, so just use your judgment until the technical issue is fixed". Here they really do need a technical solution to a technical problem. Improve the tech so it has false positives on less than say 0.1% of flights. Then you can enforce the official policy and discipline staff members and/or their managers if they don't follow it.

lupire 3y ago
Why are you assuming glitches exist? Maybe all the glitches are actually stowaways.
MobiusHorizons 3y ago
The glitches wouldn’t be arbitrary like that. There is no need to assume a data corruption issue or anything like that to explain the glitches. It’s much more likely in my opinion, that the system regularly receives bad input due to people behaving in ways it wasn’t able to track. For example not scanning, double scanning because the attendant was moving the scanner around rapidly, people needing to exit the line due to one member of a larger party (eg a child or spouse) having a problem after part of the group had already been scanned.