corporate-wage-slave

I am not the sentimental type on the whole, but while doing some tidying up I came across an old boarding pass. It was for BA175, Heathrow to Kennedy, seat 64A, taken in September 2017. Which made me pause, for reasons which will be well understood by many here. It was a boarding pass that was issued on card at LHR T5.

However it has, I would say, faded away by 50% or so. Here is a part extract. And I've got some older boarding passes which are almost blank now.



Now a photograph is now digitally preserved forever, which I've done, and doubtless a bit of changing with the settings can restore the clarity. But
a) Are other people seeing better ink preservation if boarding passes are stored in a book or an airtight tin, for example?
b) What can be done to preserve what is left of the original boarding pass? A bit of me doesn't mind how memories fade, but I'm also thinking it's gone far enough!

13901

Unfortunately thermal printers aren't designed to print with longevity in mind. In my experience I found that putting the BPs in a folder like the pocket of a Leichtturm/Moleskine journal does the trick.

Edit to add - don't leave them in the sun, over time the sunlight "cooks" the paper and darkens it.

SKT-DK

I recently came across the same when looking through my old things, but attributed it to being in a hot and humid climate with the afternoon sun shining on the place I had stored things. Will be interesting to hear other people's perspectives here as well. For me (unable to really change the climate), I tried to move things to a corner with constant shade so will see if that helps.

Oxon Flyer

I have one of these BPs on the same card stock from 2015, kept in a light-tight boxfile, and it's now faded to the point of being almost unreadable.

Seems they have a half-life of a couple of years, or even less.

HarryHolden68

I have just looked at a Tokyo BP from 2012 and it is still as new. Been in a drawer with old memorabilia with others and the associated menus. One day I will publish the CW menu to JNB from 2008. That is a treat and shows how far things have changed.

VSLover

it does not matter how the bp are stored it seems as i have found bps around my home like loose change in all conditions of settings and it does not seem to make much difference into how much things fade.

i presume it is combo of the type of paper used as well because i have loads of bps from AA for example that are entirely legible from the same trips i'd have BA bps.

fluffymitten

Apparently (but I've not tried it myself) you can restore thermal printed documents by gentle application of heat. (source: https://pandapaperroll.com/thermal-paper-fades-restore/)

Hopefully you can restore it enough that you can take a photo of the original image.

I'm not convinced it's possible to preserve the original document for a long as I've got business receipts kept in my accounts storage, in cool conditions well away from light sources, and the some of the papers are now blank.

corporate-wage-slave

This boarding pass has been kept 1,000 feet up in Northumberland, so you can remove hot and humid from the equation. I don't think it has had sun exposure either.

scottishpoet

some reasons and suggestions here , its about receipts but I suspect the same principles apply

Faded Receipt | How to keep receipts from Fading - How to Restore receipt (graphictickets.com)

1Aturnleft

Mine are stacked in a bundle with an elastic from a bag tag around them. I've put pre thermal ones top and bottom and sandwiched the thermal ones in between. I have some thermal ones dating back to 2004 where they're still crisp and almost as good as new.

percysmith

I can't remember if it is this article https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...oan-sharks-and

But 7-eleven here in HK was called out for issuing thermal receipts to our domestic helpers for repayment of loans (7-eleven acted as a collection point for personal loans). The thermal receipts faded and the helpers cannot prove their repayments.

jonas123

As a data point, I keep some of my old boarding passes in a 'business card' type wallet, left in a drawer. I can confirm that even in the plastic sleeves, these boarding passes still fade

bisonrav

Your enemies in most forms of archival are humidity, light and UV, heat, and chemical processes. Some chemical processes are unavoidable, some others are caused by contact between items (a classic which is not well known is that PVC in some "protective" record sleeves reacts with vinyl records and eventually creates surface noise and destroys them) or intrinsic attributes of the item, for example acid in paper.

So preservation requires dealing with as many of these as possible. Archival box for starters which will be acid free and lightproof. Silica gel to remove moisture. Store in a temperature stable location. Use a buffer between items, for example acid free tissue or cartridge paper. You can't prevent everything, but you can work through issues. Bundling stuff together isn't always a good strategy for preservation but it does tend to sort out the light issue.

Saltire74

I remember when BA started flying to ALG from LGW around twenty years or so ago. Coming back from ALG, all boarding passes were printed out on A4 thin card using a normal printer but everything was printed from a template on the screen. Whoever dealt with the flight list had to input the details of each passenger individually. Came out in batches of three or four bps at a time and no serrated tear line in the days when gate agents kept a part of the BP. All ready, neatly cut for passengers as they checked in and quite shiny. Am sure they wouldn’t have faded too much over the years. I do like to get an e-BP as well as a hard copy these days.

subject2load

No ‘preservation’ tips of my own but I do keep hold of a limited number of used BP’s - usually those relating to any particularly memorable trips. These days they’re hardly eye-catching documents in themselves, though in times past were rather more colourful. One of the (many different) BA iterations over the years was a colour-coded version covering the four classes, with your seat number appearing in the relevant box (as below). Even includes a smoking or no-smoking seat indicator !

BP’s apart, there’s always been more interest for me in the full-monty paper tickets - already a very distant memory of course, sadly. They carried masses of info within. Then a standardised IATA version came into being at some point, although the vast majority of my old tickets - whether hand-written or ‘auto-print’ - were unique to the carrier involved and had covers to reflect that. Invariably, they would include the airline’s own logo & artwork. Air Malta had a variation on this for a little while (pictured), to allow space for a few (somewhat grainy) photos intended to draw visitors to historic / cultural attractions on the island. Ah… nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.