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How many laws would I be breaking if someone fly in my place?

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How many laws would I be breaking if someone fly in my place?

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Old Oct 12, 2010, 9:10 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by Robert N

(v) your mate no shows for the Allentown flight. United will not care. He will not get any miles for it - but who cares.
better yet, your mate's ticket to Allentown is refundable
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Old Oct 12, 2010, 9:23 pm
  #17  
 
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Originally Posted by Centurion
Do all of you flyertalk folks really believe that the ID requirement for domestic flights had anything to do with security? It has everything to do with airline revenue.
Before 9/11 local newspapers had plenty of ads in classified section, like NYC-LAX 01/15 - 02/01 male $100. Remember?
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Old Oct 12, 2010, 9:57 pm
  #18  
 
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wow. if I was guaranteed 1st class and could go to NYC area I'd do it lol.

Plenty of free time here
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 4:15 am
  #19  
 
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Originally Posted by sbm12
Yup, and he's a FT member. He also got to experience a nice interview with the US DEA agents in Thailand who thought he was paying the farmers to act as drug mules.

In that case, however, the passengers were all flying under their own names and crediting the points to a pooled account. Everything was within the scope of the programs T&C.

To the OP, I'm not sure that you'd be violating any laws but you would almost certainly be in violation of the T&C and subject to losing the account with no recourse.

You can credit points to a pooled account? Which airline program is this and why haven't I found out about it?
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 4:23 am
  #20  
 
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Independently if this should be done or not, getting through the checkpoint is easy: Print out the boarding pass at home, and make a second copy photoshopped to have the name of the person flying. Use the real pass to board and the altered one to go through security. The TSA does not run the passes through any database, nor check ID against potential "bad person" lists.

See how effective showing ID is??
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 4:56 am
  #21  
 
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Regardless of how you accomplish this, you are violating the T&Cs and would likely have your account terminated and forfeit all your miles/status. My conscience wouldn't support this plan, but YMMV.

That said, this is easy to do. You can get past TSA without lying in a number of valid ways (pitiful how easy it is). Here's one example* of easy (not truthful) that doesn't require purchasing a ticket at all. Surrogate flier uses an altered boarding pass. This will get him past TSA, since they don't match anything other than name on an ID with the name on a piece of paper. Create your own piece of paper and you pass the TSA test (a test that costs us $Gazillions and does almost nothing for real security, BTW, ).

Or you could double-down on stupid. When you get caught, claim you and your buddy were GF swapping** in a carnal version of up in the air. You'd still lose your account and all your miles, but would probably get your 15 minutes o' fame and a book deal out of it.

* - I hate to mention this example, because TSA will try to fix this non-problem with another program costing 10 times as much.

** - Or claim you were deliberately trying to expose TSA as a sham. ^

Last edited by ScatterX; Oct 13, 2010 at 5:45 am Reason: spelling
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:02 am
  #22  
 
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This is much easier if you have a sibling who looks very similar to you
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:08 am
  #23  
 
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Sounds painful.

Originally Posted by cocaine
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...d-tsa-sfo.html

From - http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtrav...documents.shtm

"Passengers who do not or cannot present an acceptable ID will have to provide information to the Transportation Security Officer performing Travel Document Checking duties in order to verify their identity. Passengers who are cleared through this process may be subject to additional screening. Passengers whose identity cannot be verified by TSA may not be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint or onto an airplane."

Interesting, I did not know this was possible either, but looked it up when I saw the post.
this whole process sounds painful. better just to bring the I.D.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:13 am
  #24  
 
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Originally Posted by FriendlySkies
OP, don't do it. Let's say they find out that you aren't the person on the BP. I bet TSA will dump the plane and send all of the pax to be re-screened.
The real threat is if the airline finds out; one stands to lose everything (status, EQMs, RDMs). That's far worse than a stupid TSA terminal/aircraft dump.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:15 am
  #25  
 
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ISTR the TSO-TDC marks up the boarding pass. Do the GAs commonly check the BP for this mark? If they do, that would defeat the whole BP-swap scheme.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:19 am
  #26  
 
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I'm not so sure this would be that easy to do. Doesn't the process involve giving them all your information so they can look you up? Do you guys really think they can't access a DMV photo or passport photo?
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:23 am
  #27  
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Originally Posted by flapping arms
ISTR the TSO-TDC marks up the boarding pass. Do the GAs commonly check the BP for this mark? If they do, that would defeat the whole BP-swap scheme.

Nope, you can get another one past security (change seats, lost it, whatever) and the gate doesn't care.

Try it yourself next time, print out two boarding passes, use one through security and one to board, if they do question say you grabbed the wrong one, but they won't even mention it probably.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:28 am
  #28  
 
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Originally Posted by cordelli
Nope, you can get another one past security (change seats, lost it, whatever) and the gate doesn't care.

Try it yourself next time, print out two boarding passes, use one through security and one to board, if they do question say you grabbed the wrong one, but they won't even mention it probably.
They don't know if you are just connecting in this city.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 10:59 am
  #29  
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Originally Posted by SFflyer123
this whole process sounds painful. better just to bring the I.D.
Not necessarily. It has also been reported that going to the checkpoint without ID resulted in nothing more than questions being asked to prove your identity and a secondary. I believe some instances have taken 15-20 minutes. However, it's not a good idea to claim you have no ID when in fact you do, since this will likely turn up in the secondary.
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Old Oct 13, 2010, 11:10 am
  #30  
 
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Originally Posted by pkerr
A few details?
You can fly domestically on SK in Sweden (and I think in other Scandinavian countries) without an ID, as long as you have the FF card matching the booking. (Points earning are pretty lousy though, so not a big MR opportunity )

You can fly intra-Schengen on LH from airports in Germany (DUS for sure, I think the other major ones as well) without anyone checking ID. I'm not sure whether you need the matching FF card to get a boarding pass from the automat, or just the locator number. Most gates have an automated BP reader and the GA is just standing by to deal with connecting passengers' BP's that don't have the LH 3D-barcode or some other problem. I don't know whether they check ID for those BP, but I can't imagine why they would.

That said, I don't think there's any rule preventing them from asking for an ID, since the tickets are non-transferable. And for intra-Schengen travel, you are supposed to carry an ID, anyhow.

Last edited by neko; Oct 13, 2010 at 11:16 am
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