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Woman Boarded Delta Flight Using Strangers Boarding Pass

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Old Sep 16, 2014, 1:19 pm
  #16  
 
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Originally Posted by Athena53
So, if the TSA screening (liquids in Freedom Baggie, take off your shoes, pass through the Nude-o-Scope) is adequate on its own, why the insistence on photo ID? Think of the time we could all save if it's not necessary!
Because good security (no commentary on whether the TSA is good security though) is done in layers, a failure of a single layer like someone from the no fly list getting onto a plane does not by itself lead to possibility of an attack. That person was still screened so while in theory the risk they present is supposed to be higher than the average passenger, they screening ideally would have detected prohibited item they attempted to smuggle.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 1:20 pm
  #17  
 
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Originally Posted by N830MH
How did she get another boarding pass by someone else? How it did happen? She took wrong BP.
If you read the earlier posts in this thread, you will see there are a number of ways a person could innocently pick up (or be given) the wrong boarding pass.

She is not supposed to be. Is she arrested?
Why would she be arrested? She had a ticket for that flight, just the wrong boarding pass.

Or did they let her go without incident?
They let her go. What grounds would they have to do otherwise? She had a ticket for the flight in question, and had been put through the security screening just as all the other passengers had been. She hadn't sneaked onto a plane she didn't belong on, she just had the wrong boarding documents.

Last edited by artemis; Sep 16, 2014 at 1:33 pm
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 1:24 pm
  #18  
 
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Originally Posted by Athena53
So, if the TSA screening (liquids in Freedom Baggie, take off your shoes, pass through the Nude-o-Scope) is adequate on its own, why the insistence on photo ID? Think of the time we could all save if it's not necessary!
You can actually get through security without photo ID.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 1:27 pm
  #19  
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Originally Posted by N830MH
How did she get another boarding pass by someone else? How it did happen? She took wrong BP. Something is not right. She is not supposed to be. Is she arrested? Or did they let her go without incident?
The boarding pass could have been printed by an agent. The agent may have chosen the wrong passenger by accident. On the other hand, she could have entered her name into the kiosk and the kiosk chose the wrong name.

If two passengers with the same name are on the same flight (with the same destination), this is an easy mixup if you are using a check-in method that does not require a frequent flyer number and/or the PNR locator. It used to happen all the time before online/kioks checkin.

My name is relatively common if I'm going to some place with a large Asian-American population. Back in the 80's and early 90's, I encountered this problem once or twice per year.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 1:55 pm
  #20  
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Originally Posted by ronin308
Because good security (no commentary on whether the TSA is good security though) is done in layers, a failure of a single layer like someone from the no fly list getting onto a plane does not by itself lead to possibility of an attack. That person was still screened so while in theory the risk they present is supposed to be higher than the average passenger, they screening ideally would have detected prohibited item they attempted to smuggle.
Multiple layers or not, failure of some single layers does lead to possibility of attack. Fortunately terrorists in the US capable and willing to attack a US passenger flight are so rare as to border on being statistically non-existent at airports in the US. That too just means that the PreCheck LLL and other passenger background checking-reliant measures of the TSA don't measurably improve security of the flight.

If anything, passenger ID, background and boarding pass checks (and the TSA procedures dependent upon that checking) increases risk by diverting resources from interdicting contraband weapons/explosives/incendiaries.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 2:00 pm
  #21  
 
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Originally Posted by JW76
You can actually get through security without photo ID.
I know- I once had to do that when I couldn't find my driver's license. They were quite decent about it but they DO search you thoroughly.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 2:06 pm
  #22  
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Originally Posted by Athena53
I know- I once had to do that when I couldn't find my driver's license. They were quite decent about it but they DO search you thoroughly.
Even with ID, they sometimes do that same search. A version of the search applicable to passengers whom the TSA wants haraSSSSed.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 2:09 pm
  #23  
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Originally Posted by ronin308
I'm not picking on you in particular as many other posters have made this same mistake but neither of those things are a security breach, they are policy violations.

An example of an actual security breach would be someone on the no fly list getting through security due to having the wrong boarding pass or someone getting into a part of the airport that only ID holders should be allowed.
I said "supposedly" a security breach. It is if we believe that TSA rules (or policies) improve security. In this case, if we believe that only passengers who have been (or should have been) precleared should get PreCheck and others should be screened more rigorously (jackets, shoes, liquids, computers, nude-o-scope, etc.), then it would be a security breach to let anyone who hasn't been precleared enter the airport through PreCheck, yet this is done all the time. Of course, various other security breaches and flawed policies (such as not screening airport employees or checking cargo) are more significant.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 2:10 pm
  #24  
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Oh snap

I guess it is bad to give someone your first class upgrade when you do a hidden city ticketing and just want to make sure you get the MQM's?

*slowly walks away*
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 3:28 pm
  #25  
 
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So let's see--

1. ID checks are a critical element of TSA security ("Identity Matters") and therefore MUST be conducted.

2. When the ID check process fails, TSA says identity doesn't matter because the person and their luggage were screened anyway.

3. Neither the press nor the general public can muster two brain cells to rub together and call out this obvious contradiction as evidence of the uselessness of the ID check as a security measure.

Instead, all we get are proclamations of how this is a serious "security breach" by those who seek monetary gain through fear-mongering.

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Old Sep 16, 2014, 3:40 pm
  #26  
 
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Originally Posted by fintheman
Oh snap

I guess it is bad to give someone your first class upgrade when you do a hidden city ticketing and just want to make sure you get the MQM's?

*slowly walks away*
Who would do such a thing ?!
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 3:41 pm
  #27  
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Originally Posted by fintheman
Oh snap

I guess it is bad to give someone your first class upgrade when you do a hidden city ticketing and just want to make sure you get the MQM's?

*slowly walks away*
That indeed still how it goes in the US, even as it used to happen way more often before the ID checking nonsense started up in the last few months of 2001. It's still done to earn the miles, make some money, or to save some money by keeping alive the post-stopover onward portion of a ticketed booking.

The replacement passenger being airside already or using a refundable ticket's boarding pass to get airside is part of that method.

No doubt the airline revenue protection people don't like this.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 4:36 pm
  #28  
 
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Sorry guys, this is not clear to me. So when I check in, the airline checks my identity and valid flight and confirms or issues a boarding pass. When I go through "security," they are only confirming identity? The TSA is not confirming that I am a passenger (except that I have a boarding pass that might not be the one for my flight). The TSA scan is not connected to airline flight records except for what the pass says?

Cheers,
Pogopossum
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 4:42 pm
  #29  
 
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Isn't this obvious? Look at the lady who kept boarding planes without a boarding pass. That tells you how good TSA screening is.

And to the people who talked about the multi-hole swiss cheese model of failure: that presumes errors are independent of each other. Many times they aren't. Like the flight landing in the Hudson-one engine failing is supposed to be rare, so both should be extremely rare. Unless the same thing (birds) caused them to fail.
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Old Sep 16, 2014, 5:43 pm
  #30  
 
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Originally Posted by pogopossum
Sorry guys, this is not clear to me. So when I check in, the airline checks my identity and valid flight and confirms or issues a boarding pass. When I go through "security," they are only confirming identity? The TSA is not confirming that I am a passenger (except that I have a boarding pass that might not be the one for my flight). The TSA scan is not connected to airline flight records except for what the pass says?

Cheers,
Pogopossum
Yes these two procedures are totally uncorrelated. One is there to protect the airline's revenue and the other is allegedly there to protect you from terrorists.

You could for example buy a refundable ticket, check in, go through security, cancel your check-in and refund the ticket and then fly on someone else's onward 1st-class upgraded ticket to anywhere in the USA for free.

Not that I have ever done so. Ahem!
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