5d ago

Boarding passes and check-in could be scrapped in air travel shake-up

www.theguardian.com

5d ago

Facial recognition and a ‘journey pass’ stored on passengers’ phones are part of UN-backed plans to digitise air transport

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/apr/11/boarding-passes-and-check-in-to-be-scrapped-in-air-travel-shake-up-plans

Privacy @lemmy.dbzer0.com

cm0002 @lemmy.world

5d ago

Facial recognition and a ‘journey pass’ stored on passengers’ phones are part of UN-backed plans to digitise air transport

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/apr/11/boarding-passes-and-check-in-to-be-scrapped-in-air-travel-shake-up-plans

Civil Aviation @lemmy.zip

Nemeski @lemm.ee

5d ago

Boarding passes and check-in could be scrapped in air travel shake-up

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/apr/11/boarding-passes-and-check-in-to-be-scrapped-in-air-travel-shake-up-plans

46 comments

passengers will also be able to upload their passports to their phone and travel through airports using their face for verification. Instead of manually checking in, which would let airlines know who intends to board their flights, airlines will instead be alerted when passengers arrive at the airport and their face is scanned
They can’t even reliably scan a QR code, how can they pull that off with 100% accuracy?
- Y'all know the: "Please remove item from the bagging area" "Please wait for an attendent"
  But instead of self-check-outs, its airport security.
  "Face not recognized, please wait for an agent"
  You'll wait 5 hours, you get strip-searched by border agents, and your plane already left, and no refunds.
  🫠
  
  To be fair the bagging area issue is usually caused by a bad configuration, and usually weight based, not camera recognition.
  Different stores setup those systems with varying parameters, some are so strict that just regular product variances go outside their limits.
- This also means people wouldn't be able to travel with cheap burner phones, which is extremely problematic for people who need to travel to and from increasingly authoritarian states.
  
  I think that's a feature, not a bug.
  
  It also means you are required to travel with a phone. Some people don't own a cell phone because they don't want one, need one, or can't afford one.
- TSA in the States has already pulled it off. they use sources they already have like your current and past passport and ID photos for verification and do not store the pic they take when crossing TSA. that's what the signs say at least. I guess it's good enough for them already..
  
  Yeaaah iirc they will forever keep the fingerprints of anyone that wants to enter the USA

using their face for verification
And here is where they underestimate how belligerent people can be.
- I don't like SovCits, but I wish 50% of people who travel by plane were SovCits. We'll see how quickly these are rolled back.
  
  Uncle Tony on you tube likened air travel to jail… and I can’t shake it… I feel like a prisoner everytime I fly and HATE IT
- Then twins walk into the airport and the system crashes.
  And facial recognition has been known to fail with very dark skin so that'll turn into a racial issue real quick.

Ah, just the privacy nightmare we need.

I do not like this. At all. Facial recognition and forced digitization? I'm disabled, and when I request assistance, I literally cannot use a digital boarding pass. And the favial recognition just seems like such a breach.

Companies already issue digital boarding passes. I have a government issued digital ID in a phone app. These are convenient.
But facial recognition? Hell no, f that.
- Already here. It has been used in airport security lines for a few years now
  
  Doesn't change the fact that FUCK THAT

Sound worse to me for the travellers and airlines

Thanks I hate it

This would be stupid
- The whole thing is just security theater and rights violations. It's so stupid.

Pass

Every bit of this sounds like it's own horrible idea and they just threw it all into one big horrendous pile of nonsense.

Valérie Viale, the director of product management at Amadeus, a travel technology company, told the Times that the changes were “the biggest in 50 years”. She said: “The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s. The industry has now decided it’s time to upgrade to modern systems that are more like what Amazon would use.”
Lmaooooo yes let's that famously consumer-first megalith as our baseline
- Amazon of the "just walk out" shops powered by AI, that turned out to be s lot of Indian workers in the background.

I gotta travel with my twin more often. I can 50-50 unlock his stuff. Let's fuck this up.
- Another proof that biometry auth is stupid

The airport tried that shit on me today. I was able to make it print me a boarding pass, though.
I'm becoming a luddite in my middle age.

How delays and connecting flights are handled could also change. Under the technology being developed, passengers who miss connecting flights due to delays out of their control could automatically be sent a notification on their phones with details of their new onward flight. Their journey pass would automatically update and they would be allowed to board the new flight.
This is the only part of that whole thing that sounds any good.
- This isn't new though, I landed after a long flight last year and had a notification asking me to confirm rebooking to another flight because mine was delayed.
  Turns out that no the flight wasn't delayed and luckily I mentioned it when dropping my bag because a person had to sort it out for me and rebooked me back on my original flight that was on time. So now I don't trust the technology at all.
- It says "could" not "will", so they will just never implement that part.
- there's exactly nothing preventing them from doing that in the current system