Have you ever printed a boarding pass?

http://bbryson.com/bill/2007/10/12/have-you-ever-printed-a-boarding-pass/

by kilian • 15 years ago

226 54 15 years ago

This makes me happy. =)

kilian• 15 years ago

Not a single person making a fuss about a "non-standard" boarding pass is something I wouldn't have guessed at all. Happiness all around :)

sthulbourn3• 15 years ago

British Airways still throw a hissy fit when ever you present them with an electronic version of the boarding pass.

Lufthansa for great justice.

vetinari3• 15 years ago

Maybe depends on the airrport. For me, BA was always cool with boarding pass on the Kindle.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

Oh, for sure. I started reading this and kept waiting for the part where he gets tackled by TSA or something. Terr'ist boarding pass, can be used as a weapon, or something.

Faith in US travel restored by 1%.

city41• 15 years ago

This happened almost 4 years ago though. The TSA has gotten a lot more jaded and hated since then. I'd be curious how something like this would go down today.

far33d• 15 years ago

My wife printed half-size boarding passes to try and save some paper and we go SO much crap at every juncture.

kd0amg• 15 years ago

Depends on the airport too. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pass like this accepted at CMX, but I would much rather keep my distance should someone try this at ORD.

InfinityX0• 15 years ago

Sounds like the perfect front for a terrorist mission. Pretend to delight. Guard down, chaos ensues.

FBI, don't arrest me.

stretchwithme• 15 years ago

good one. I love it when take something and muck around with our expectations of it. Isn't that one thing art is supposed to do?

patrickk3• 15 years ago

It would also be cool if you printed your boarding pass to PDF, but instead of printing a giant-sized version, loading it onto an Amazon Kindle and presenting that at the gate. Test Amazon's claim of being just like paper to the limit. Can't see why it wouldn't work.

reverend_gonzo• 15 years ago

Delta already supports sending you a PDF which you can show on your phone and have it scanned.

Did this last time as I was running late to the gate.

epochwolf• 15 years ago

You can do this with coupons and an ipad at my local barnes and noble. (They just type in the number. The printed coupons never scan right anyway)

patrickk3• 15 years ago

I was thinking the matte screen and e-ink would be more conducive to scanning successfully with a barcode reader :-)

Turing_Machine3• 15 years ago

Many major airports accept "boarding passes" that are actually 2D barcodes displayed on your mobile phone. I'd expect those would work on the Kindle just fine.

ENOTTY• 15 years ago

I don't think it'd work since every time I fly, TSA uses a marker to write on my boarding pass...

rdtsc• 15 years ago

It would work for TSA, might not work well for your kindle ;-)

I can see a smart-ass TSA agent seeing your kindle and nonchalantly mark it with his permanent red marker, then in one fluid "kthxbye" motion give it back to you and move on to the next person in line.

You'll complain but they'll just reply back with Amazon's marketing line "It's just like paper!"

iamdave• 15 years ago

I used my phone as a boarding pass once, scanned fine, they just marked my baggage claim slip.

vetinari3• 15 years ago

I did it few times; it was accepted at check-in, but cannot be scanned at the gate (is is too tiny), so when the people at check-in saw it, they issued a paper boarding pass for me.

Turing_Machine3• 15 years ago

That may vary according to airline or airport. I haven't had any problems with it.

kschrader• 15 years ago

The Continental application for iOS allows you to just pull up your boarding pass on the screen and have the security screener scan the phone screen.

I would imagine that some of the other airline apps do so as well.

Timothee• 15 years ago

I can confirm that United does it with their mobile site. You would get a page with an image of the QR code and every other info they need.

(funny thing when I did it was that my screen had a few lines running across the middle of it, so I had to pull down the page and hold so that the QR code fit in the undamaged area)

dandelany• 15 years ago

I did this once (right after getting my Kindle, ha), and it actually scanned correctly at the gate! The trick is zooming it just right to get the barcode to be the right size on the screen.

hinathan• 15 years ago

I do this all the time going SFO - JFK on United. You get an email with a link, opening that link on a phone shows a 2d barcode. It's quite simple and the scanners at security and the gate show your name and the agent checks that against your ID. I was expecting the system to be somewhat brittle but I've never had an issue with it.

HelloBeautiful• 15 years ago

>> Can't see why it wouldn't work.

There is a great (no sarcasm) air company in your country, called Ryanair. Don't even try it with them :D

patrickk3• 15 years ago

Actually, Ryanair is surprisingly open to technological innovations as it dovetails perfectly with their ruthless driving down of costs. Examples include ~100% of bookings and check-ins done online (before other airlines woke up to this opportunity), use of mobile phones in-flight (Ryanair gets a massive cut) and the wingtips on the end on planes wings which help save fuel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Past_fleet

I'm not sure if they do it yet, buy I'm sure I read somewhere that there was talk of Ryanair introducing the scanning of barcodes on mobile phones screens. Of course, you can't take any gossip about Ryanair seriously - past examples include €10 transatlantic seats subsidized by €10,000 first class seats, charging for toilet access on-board, in-air blowjobs (yes, Michael O'Leary actually said that!), standing section instead of seats.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfIY24BErBE

viraptor• 15 years ago

Works on the Amsterdam <-> Brussels train. It scanned correctly even from a mobile.

evanw• 15 years ago

It looks like we've broken his web server. Here's a cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a4-v04...

sixtofour• 15 years ago

And here's a working link to another site's reprint of the original:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227456-Have-you-ever-print...

perokreco• 15 years ago

The article is down, but on-topic, I know bunch of large airlines(EasyJet for example) that let you present boarding pass on your smartphone so you do not have to print it.

mcantelon• 15 years ago

tldr: Man prints out his boarding pass in large format. Delight ensues.

blahblahblah• 15 years ago

Glad he had fun because that's kind of an expensive boarding pass. When I've printed posters at Kinko's before, it usually comes out to about $40 for a 1 meter^2 poster.

zem2• 15 years ago

the sad thing is that my first thought was "as a brown guy, there's no way i'd ever dare to do that".

rwmj• 15 years ago

Reminds me when I printed a boarding pass in "2-up" mode. Of course the 2D barcode on the pass was half-sized and none of their machines could read it.

Have you ever printed a boarding pass?

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