Has anyone ever flown paperlessly?

D

dbzeag

Wants to kiss you where it stinks
Jun 9, 2006
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So I got an email today of a pending flight out of Houston from Continental. It was my boarding pass and it said to "Fly Paperless!" and all I had to do was show my phone to a TSA to get through security, then show my phone again at the gate to board the plane.

I have no idea how a TSA agent can physically sign my phone to prove that it was cleared, nor how to check bags when the boarding pass is already "printed" out.

And how flawed is this premise? I mean it seems very hackable to have your boarding pass emailed to you let alone having it displayed on your phone. You have to have a very good phone to display the image properly. And it has to be a smart phone (which most don't have), not a laptop.

It just seems flawed all around.

Anyone ever try this?
 
The TSA just sees w_a_w's fro popping out of the limo at the Departures stand and they roll out the red carpet.

Pimp.
 
yeah, make sure you use paper. the agents I ran into looked at me like I had 3 heads trying to use my phone as a boarding pass and I ended up missing my flight due to it
 
:D

I like that name..


Honestly, when we got to the airport, all 6 suitcases and us, we had no idea what to do. Then some guy came up and asked us how we booked, we told him paperless, and he took care of everything and handed us our boarding passes. Loved it.
 
Ol' Diamondback Sturgeon said:
:D

I like that name..


Honestly, when we got to the airport, all 6 suitcases and us, we had no idea what to do. Then some guy came up and asked us how we booked, we told him paperless, and he took care of everything and handed us our boarding passes. Loved it.
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Then you didn't do it paperless. You were handed a boarding pass. That's paper.

The idea this email had be do is to open a PDF file with the boarding pass information in it already, show my phone with the open PDF to a TSA agent, and I could pass. No paper, no print out, nothing tangible at all to prove you are who you are and that you are boarding with a ticket to that plane. It is all digital.
 
dbzeag said:
Then you didn't do it paperless. You were handed a boarding pass. That's paper.

The idea this email had be do is to open a PDF file with the boarding pass information in it already, show my phone with the open PDF to a TSA agent, and I could pass. No paper, no print out, nothing tangible at all to prove you are who you are and that you are boarding with a ticket to that plane. It is all digital.
Click to expand...

I've flown 'paperless' in the past but still had to show a photo ID.
 
Amstel said:
I've flown 'paperless' in the past but still had to show a photo ID.
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That I am ok with. But the "virtual" boarding pass I am not ok with. Much easier to fake/doctor, and how does the TSA mark that they have reviewed it? And you are requiring personal technology to be able to display it properly to be readable by the machines. Maybe the TSA is getting more used to it as Continental uses it more, but somehow I doubt it.
 
Yea I'll pass on that current feature for a few more years. I agree, it doesn't sound to be all that good of an idea.
 
I have done this for real, without ever holding a boarding pass. Detroit to Dallas/Fort Worth on Northwest. At the time I had a Treo 750. Just pulled up the boarding pass on the screen (it's one of those rotated barcode thingys) and the security guy scanned it to make sure it was legit to get through security. Same thing at the gate when actually boarding the plane.

Seamless. Northwest always got a bad rap, but I never had any issues with them and loved flying NWA.
 
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here, it looked like this:
iphone-sms-prod.gif


that would be airline AC, flight 0431, seat 12 A
 
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