titan1

So first to clarify: There are no bad intentions whatsoever connected to my request. I simply want to collect my necessary miles before year end and thought about the following:

I'm intending to go on a flight tomorrow, have my boarding pass scanned at the boarding gate, pretending to go on board of the plane but in reality secretly "escape" instead. I know, usually this wouldn't be easy to pull off in Europe or the US but in Brazil boarding staff frequently seem to lose overview about pax. My only question though: Is there a manual count on board where staff would find out I'm not on board? Or would a manual count only be performed in case there are anomalies/discrepancies, i.e. in extraordinary circumstances?

I simply want to save time and money for the flight back but I'm very close to my status which requires this one last flight. Therefore my intended strategy. Thank you for your advice if this is feasible or if I should invest 9 hours of my time in both flights.

salehir

Can never be done after the final boarding pass scan. Safety and security means a final count and your strategy could undermine this resulting in unnecessary delays for the entire aircraft to verify who is missing and offloading the bags if any.

ajGoes

What you're proposing is exactly what someone who had checked a bag containing a bomb would want to do. Airlines take a lot of care to prevent this.

EmailKid

Every flight I've been on has had a manual count preformed. Including in Latin America.

MichaelA380

And yet, what you are describing is just the opposite and has malicious intent (i.e. cheating) written all over it ... On the top of that, you will also cause disruption to the travel plans of everyone else on that flight ... But fear not, airport / airline employees are not as stupid as you may think, as ultimately, although at the expense of the time of the others, you will be offloaded from the flight - meaning no miles collected as well. In all honesty, if I were the airline, I would put you on a no-fly list for this.

titan1

Thanks for the heads-up and explanations, much appreciated. Obviously I will stay away from this idea.

titan1

Tell that as well to the thousands of people in Germany and Austria that use train trips offered by airlines instead of flights due to their short distance in order to stack up their air mile account without ever riding on these trains.

dici

I had once fly Uzbekistan airways when one of the passenger accidentally uses a duplicated boarding pass to board and the system allows him to board. Then they spent two hours of recounting and boarding pass rechecking, until they realize that the passenger used the wrong boarding pass.

But until today, I still dont know how the airline can issue two set of boarding pass to one travel group.

trooper

Are you claiming the train staff count heads and refuse to depart if all passengers are not there? No? then how is it ACTUALLY anywhere near the same thing?

absoluy

There's still a little "malicious intent" involved (i.e. being credited miles for segments/trips that you never intend to take), but of a very different scale to the OP's proposal.

JumboJet

Not a good idea. If you want the status just take the flight

tkelvin69

Ah, the old "someone else did it so why can't I?" philosophy.

titan1

Everybody just calm down? I understand the security aspect and possible disruptions which is why I stay away from the original idea. But airlines offering loopholes that are subsequently exchanged and used by half of the people on here - isn't that the whole idea? I mean after all it's not stealing from anyone but these are paid tickets...

DutchessPDX

Just because others are doing it doesn't mean it isn't cheating!

Repooc17

Source: Bureau of Made Up Statistics