There are three ways to check-in for a flight (that I know of) - 1) see CO agent; 2) use the kiosk machine or 3) on-line at co.com. #1 and #2 get you CO paper stock, and #3 you get from your printer or fax.

When boarding the plane, the gate agent either runs the Bording Pass from method #1 or #2 through a machine or scans #3. Sometimes they manually enter at their terminal some information, which I thought was the check-in sequence number, or rip off the top half of the printed BP generated through #3.

Today, I gave the gate agent my BP done by #3. She looked at it and said "OK" without scanning or any type of manual entry. I asked will I still get segment credit and she said "Yes". This is the first time an agent did not record the BP somewhere.

The question is how in the heck do they actually know I boarded the plane? Will I get segment credit automatically?