joshua362

I'm surprised this doesn't happen all day long by people with expiring TTFs who feel burned by the fact that the funds are locked in their name. Buy a ticket, check in, get the boarding pass, get the friend/family past TSA with a fully refundable ticket then board the flight (without checked baggage), cancel the fully refundable ticket. In the unlikely event of a TSA gate check or other mishap (a plane swap after boarding), show the dummy BP and/or claim some sort of paper switch-a-roo happened. Takes some balls but I'm sure it as been figured out and done.

flyer4512

Yes because people who have already paid for flights are always looking to buy other tickets in the concourse, in fact I saw this scenario once where a guy was scalping Lunar Shuttle tickets.


So basically 2 people headed to the airport with tickets in their names, both passed through TSA with tickets and ID's in their name..No ID and you are taken aside and asked questions to verify your identity. ...............what is gained by them not boarding the correct flight ? Whoever had the stolen ticket in their name can still be tracked if the Airline wanted to do so.

I had a connection through MCI last year where TSA was checking ID's at the gate and have seen TSA do this several times although only once where my flight was picked for enhanced security check

LegalTender

The airline tells a customer "that due to the scope and size of the breach and theft, the corporate fraud department is investigating."

Draw your own conclusions.

Never, ever be pro-active like Cathay Pacific. Their shares slumped to the lowest level in nine years after it disclosed suspicious activity on its network in March.

toomanybooks

justhere

No, that's not what I said. I said that the person who flew may not have had their name on the ticket. Next time you fly, think about what would happen if you and some other random guy standing next to you swapped boarding passes right before you boarded. Then extrapolate that thought out a little further, and a little further, etc, and you can see the possibilities.

NoStressHere

sorry, not trying to mean or ugly, but you are making a great deal of assumptions here. And of course I am as well.

You are making a big assumption that the name on the ticket is the REAL name. Or, it could be a real name, but the person buying it had no idea it was gained through some unknown or bad process.

The naiveity and lack of logic that some folks are putting forth here is astounding.

Not everyone has a real ID.
People can go through security with a valid ID, but take a different flight.
Lots of people can easily get through security even without a boarding pass.
Not everyone that goes through security is really going on the flight they pretend to be on.
No everyone plays by the rules.
The rules are easily circumvented.

Often1

None. But, if you look at the rants on FT from all manner of travelers who are "insulted", "humiliated" and will never fly / stay / rent at X again because they were asked a security question of some kind, you will see that this is a marketing problem for WN.

I have no problem with it and simply recognize that not everyone has a smart phone so there have to be other ways to verify. But, two-factor SMS takes care of most people.

Unfortunately most laws and rules won't permit it, but it would be fine with me if WN and other companies offered a fully non-secure system to people who are willing to accept 100% of the fraud responsibility. If your CC is compromised, no chargeback. Too bad it's not in the cards.

LegalTender

Email takes care of the others. Banks verify you when you sign in from a new device populating a SMS or email one-time code. I've never been challenged on a smart-phone (except on a roaming carrier in Europe). Southwest IT is the rub.

toomanybooks

Or a call to a landline. Or to a friend/associate. Or a Facebook message.

I suppose there are some people for whom it's literally impossible. Cool. At least offer it to the 99.999999% of us who could use it.

Credit card companies sure have no trouble making me verify who I am when I sign on from a different computer/device.

danielonn

Just a thought the hacker could pay with a Visa Gift Card and use a phony billing address! So it can be hard to trace a good hacker if they know how to block their IP/MAC address!

kennycrudup

Eh ... that's not how my AmEx was compromised, and both times (over 8 years) AmEx had a new card out overnight, and refunded all the charges. For such seldom occurrences vs. the number of times I'm using my card at WN (et al.) I'm just not worried about it.

NoStressHere

Yep... it is rare enough there really is no issue for 95%+ of the customers.

Some folks just like to worry.

i never, ever worry about CC fraud. Neither should others.

Often1

I am fine with 2-factor authentication and have voluntarily added it where available to numerous accounts.

My point was simply (and unfortunately, many on FT don't read carefully), that there are frequent rants on FT about "excessive security" for exactly these sorts of situations.

My view on this is simple. If the two-factor is made available and you choose not to use it, you ought to be the loser if you are hacked. That works for merchant vendors such as WN. Banks / card issuers can't do that.

joshua362

Problem with SMS is now you've given out your cell number to a for profit commercial entity. Only a matter of time before it gets passed around for marketing no matter what the privacy and disclosure statements say. I guess I'm still reeling from the landline abuses of prior years.

So, a free Goggle Voice account gets you the appearance of a cell phone and 2 way texting. That is the only number banks & credit card companies get of mine.

LegalTender

Sound advice.

Of course I'm tele-marketed 3x daily on an account opened in November - and never gave out the number. I'm not hurting for student loan refinancing or breast augmentation.