Originally Posted by
wr_schwab
Step 3: Edit PDF file and change the name to match your id.
Step 3: Use edited boarding pass to cross security. Again there is no check to make sure that the boarding pass is valid or the name on the boarding pass matches a passenger on that flight you can pass through security.
Step 4: Board plane and no one knows you are really on this flight.
Would that really work in the US?
In Europe, when you board a plane using an online checkin boarding pass, ID is checked at the gate. The boarding pass is then either scanned (which will bring up a name), or the seat number is keyed into the PC at the gate (which will bring up a name) or is checked against a printed list (containing a name). If you edited the boarding pass, you would be caught in all three of those instances.
ID is not checked at the security checkpoint because that would be pointless. However it is also checked at check-in if you are obtaining a "normal" boarding pass, either by a human or the kiosk. You therefore wouldn't be able to obtain a traditional boarding card in the wrong name particularly easily (or at all) unless you held a convincing fake passport or (for UK domestics) driving licence.
Like e-ticketing, a self-printed boarding pass (or indeed most of the kiosk ones) is not itself evidence of the right to fly. It is a reference to a record in a database which is the actual passenger on the boarding list. It wouldn't even be that difficult, if everyone had the same type of ID, to remove the boarding pass completely and *just* check ID at the gate so long as sufficient suitable verification facilities were available.
That the (far more security-paranoid) US operates a system with far more loopholes than the above system is surprising and worrying at the same time.