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Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan
- openrisk 2y ago> It seems that the real purpose of the verification process is to prevent online travel agencies from setting up accounts to buy and subsequently re-sell Ryanair flights on their websites. You'd think a lighter touch verification would also serve this purpose? A face scan provides all sorts of other information that they might find valuable to have on their clients.
- tjpnz 2y agoIt costs £115 to change the name on the ticket so not sure how it makes any economic sense.
- buremba 2y agoYou need the full name & passport to be able to book a flight though. I'm not sure how the agencies can re-sell the flights later on? I'm assuming agencies do that to lock the prices early on for the flights that they know will be fully booked. If airlines didn't do the nasty tricks with the prices changing every minute, this approach wouldn't work, though.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoThey can ask that in their UI and skip Ryanair upsell process for you.
- 77pt77 2y agoThat sounds like an excuse and not a reason. Name changes in a ticket are very expensive in low-cost airlines, unless it's like a typo.
- madjam002 2y agoRequiring an account to book a flight seems perfectly reasonable to me
- croes 2y agoI think the point is > New customers must also go through a verification process which, for many people, involves invasive biometrics.
- tyingq 2y agoAnd the hard-to-select second choice is: "or going to the check-in counter at the airport more than two hours before departure" https://noyb.eu/en/booking-ryanair-flight-through-online-travel-agent-might-hold-nasty-surprise https://noyb.eu/en/booking-ryanair-flight-through-online-tra...
- jkaplowitz 2y agoNo, that’s the second choice that noyb mentioned last year when announcing their complaint about the then-current version of Ryanair’s policy. In the new article which triggered this HN post, discussing Ryanair’s updated policy, the second option is sending Ryanair a handwritten signature and a copy of a government ID.
- 77pt77 2y agoIt's an airplane ticket. Not a house selling contract!
- amelius 2y agoThis is a good thing. Let them put those facial scans on a wall of shame. Generating CO2 should be as awkward and uncomfortable as possible. I'm waiting for airlines to remove all passenger seats.
- frail_figure 2y agoWhy ever leave your basement when you can see the world in VR!?
- Tor3 2y agoPresumably that was sarcastic..
- fipar 2y agoIt will only be awkward and uncomfortable for those who can’t afford business class and not flying in low cost airlines. So basically, it’s the same way it has always been, since we’re in the climate change situation because of rich countries, and I don’t think a lot of us in poor countries care to stop producing CO2, it’s our turn now. “Everything is gonna burn, we’ll all take turns, I’ll get mine too”
- rafaelmn 2y agoI mean if all you care about is greenhouse emissions this still works - leess flying is less flying.
- fipar 2y agoWell, point is that as long as there's enough demand from people who can afford to fly, this won't mean less flying, or at least not significantly less flying, but it will mean even more inequality. I just don't think this is an easy thing to resolve.
- aziaziazi 2y ago> I don’t think a lot of us in poor countries care to stop producing CO2 I’m not sure about the situation everywhere but China gouvernement seems to care more than most other countries, rich or not. They flew a commercial plane with SAF in September. I personally think SAF is a terrible idea but give them credits for willingness.
- dspillett 2y agoThe whole budget airline market is a pile of scams. Try booking on one of RA's cheapest flight offers, and you'll find that there are things you can't not book, like a seat on the actual flight(s)!, for which there is no zero cost option. There are zero-cost options for those things on the other price-points, but they remove this to try make the cheapest options look cheaper than the competition even thought they actually aren't. (I assume other airlines use similar scummy tricks, I mention RA as they are the subject of this article and I recently looked into travel options for a future trip including them as an option).
- switch007 2y agoPeople may be thinking "what's wrong with that?" but two things to remember: Ryanair will split up people on the same booking if legally allowed to, and some seats are pretty horrible, and some Ryanair flights are 5-6 hours. (I swear some people would argue that if there was a 200% charge for booking 2 flights together that the other person should just go on holiday alone a week later...)
- shellfishgene 2y agoI'm still waiting for them to charge for the clothes you wear as carry-on luggage.
- no-reply 2y agoUhm, wear-on clothes?
- chachacharge 2y agoTo RA: scan my ass
- zo1 2y ago"Biometric identifications using the fingerprint and the anal creases (the distinctive features of anoderm, or analprint)" As far as I know, one can use the sphincter's unique pattern to identify people to some degree. Exactly the same way we can do so with iris patterns, fingerprints and even ear patterns. So be careful what you wish for! https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Biometric-identifications-using-the-fingerprint-and-the-anal-creases-the-distinctive_fig5_340467332 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Biometric-identification...
- bilekas 2y agoI had to do this recently, actually it was not possible to book the flight without doing it. I already have my passport attached to the accounting and this just felt incredibly invasive. But I still don't buy any of the reasons for it.
- attendant3446 2y agoThey always do this with my bookings. They say "booking appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent". All the bookings were made from the same account for the same person, yet I'm always forced to do additional verification. Tried creating a new account - same thing. Their support keep saying how sorry they are and that it's a mistake because it shouldn't happen when you book on their website, but it's just BS. But unfortunately, sometimes there are no options other than Ryanair.
- verisimi 2y agoSurely the conspiracy theories were wrong - it can't be we are stumbling into technocratic feudalism, with biometric ID and health checks required to leave you house? This isn't China, right?
- lifestyleguru 2y agoWe overlook the moment when airlines started requiring a smartphone to book, check in, and fly. It's been downhill from there.
- 1oooqooq 2y agolol. people pay $100 for the benefit of signing away all and every privacy just so they keep their shoes. not a single people who signed up for this things realize for much privacy rights they signed away to the government.
- sureIy 2y agoWhat is wrong with Ryanair exactly? Do they have too many customers and want to trim some out? All of these are just barriers to bookings and reasons to prefer other airlines. It's true that they don't have competitors on certain routes, but they certainly do a large number of them.
- lifestyleguru 2y agoWhat you gonna do, hire private jet? Fly with Lufthansa or Air France for EUR 500 and look at those VIPs shuttled with black Mercedes'es? Precariat should stay low, near the ground even while flying.
- FormFollowsFunc 2y agoThey have always treated their customers like crap and in the past it hasn’t hurt their sales. Though recently they have had to sell tickets lower than they would have liked to boost sales. They would like to give the impression that they are always the cheapest option but it’s not always the case and customers are too lazy to shop around. Other airlines have copied their tactics so the alternative isn’t always that much better.
- lgbr 2y agoI get that this is about preventing ticket reselling, but I have a different question: Can someone explain the controversy around face scans for air travel? Governments have clearly laid out that flying affords zero expectation of privacy, and the airlines won't let you buy a plane ticket without knowing your name (as opposed to bus or subway tickets). If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and verify your face when boarding anyway, then are we losing anything through the use of face scans? Domestic flights in the US make extensive use of facial scanning, and both US and EU border agencies digitally scan your face to identify you (Global Entry in the US even means you theoretically don't need your passport to enter the country). So why should we pretend like face scanning isn't happening? I can understand the idea that at some point, I won't need a boarding pass nor identification to get onto a plane, and at this point, it appears to not cost me any privacy that I've already lost over the last 25 years.
- _ugfj 2y ago> If the airline knows your name, and their attendants see and verify your face when boarding anyway, then are we losing anything through the use of face scans? Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach. I have seen neobanks requiring such 3D face scans but not Ryanair yet.
- lgbr 2y ago> Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach Completely understood, but the point is that it's at CBP or UK Border Force or Bundespolizei, and it's in the security camera system at the airport, too. If you've been a visitor to Australia recently, you'll be all too familiar with the process of using your phone to scan your face plus passport data. When you enter the airport, you walk past signs notifying you of extensive surveillance camera use.
- the_snooze 2y agoIf the argument is "they're already doing this, so what's the issue?" then I have to ask: if they're already doing this, then what's the value-add? Face scanning seems like quite a large complex system to deploy compared to the tried-and-true method of paper ticketing and identification. The push for this technology is suspicious to me as a Westerner because the benefits to me are unclear, while the risks (e.g., China-like ubiquitous surveillance and repression, and corporate access controls like those attorneys who were barred from a Madison Square Garden show) are a little more established.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoeveryone today is rolling out face scans as authentication hacks. third world banks have palm readers on ATMs for two decades now. amz is trying this on whole foods checkout most government apps use face scan now, because google and apple limited access to fingerprints on the OS. they will relearn all lesson learned by govts using numbers at random for people for benefits auth (like ssn) by using biometrics, which is the same thing.