Is that your boading pass?

Is that your name?

Well, FWIW, it may make very little difference:

The incident yesterday at Dulles involved a San Francisco woman who went through three security checkpoints before boarding a United Airlines flight for San Francisco. The woman showed her photo ID and the boarding pass to Argenbright screeners, but no one noticed the discrepancy between her name and the name on the boarding pass until a male passenger tried to sit in the same seat, she said.

"United is investigating the issue," said Chris Nardella, a United Airlines spokeswoman. "We have corporate security folks looking into the matter."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2001Nov6.html

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Time for a change?

I hope so!

so having people that rarely, if ever, travel check travel documents makes sense, huh? i guess these people can get jobs as auditors for our travel depts. also

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f

From the referenced article: (emphasis added)

Apparently, she wasn't trying to defraud anyone. Mistakes happen. We're human.

If you people really think that federalizing security will eliminate 100% of all errors, you are sorely mistaken. Ever gotten misdirected mail from the USPS? I have.

Did "zero tolerance" policies towards drugs or violence in public school eliminate all drugs and all violence? Nope. Same goes for zero tolerance security. You're trying to perfect something that cannot be perfected.

Even computers can screw up now and then. It's a lot harder for electrons whizzing around in circuitry to get mis-directed than does mail or a printed boarding pass.

If you find a parallel universe where everything man-made runs perfectly, let me know.

If she got her boarding pass within security it was probably only the boarding agent who made the mistake (And possibly the issuing agent). The article does not say where she got her boarding pass you are unable to determine how many people missed the mistake.

What about the times when a busy check-in agent hands you the boarding pass of another person because she is too busy trying to enforce weight limits on checked bags?

Don't laugh. This happened when a friend was checking in for a flight to SYD. She was handed the boarding pass of the couple next to her, while her agent argues about an extra 5 lbs on one of her bags. The agent insisted on weighing the bags again, despite them sitting on the scale already, then hands the BPs to my friend. Should have gotten her fired, but we're too nice.

This doesnt surprise me at all. Im posting a similar experience regarding the rigurosity of security screening at checkpoints. I guess I will post in in the Trip Reports section. I will post the link here later.

This happened to us 2 weeks ago.

My partner was waiting patiently on an upgrade to clear (he was FFCC and a virtual lock on the seat). As boarding was finishing up, we went up and asked (I hate to bug them, but it was really time to board) about his upgrade and they said that he was already on board!

Some guy had walked up when she made the announcement for Bill to remain in the boarding area, and she thought it was him. Since the 20 minute window was right there, she processed it and handed the man Bill's Boarding Pass.

He cleared ID check at boarding with no problems and was happily seated when she went to pull him off the flight to get his coach seat back.

No apology, no apparent concern or realization that this meant the ID check was worthless, nothing.

I've always been a sucker for bittersweet movies, like "Terms of Endearment" where there's humor and pain interspersed. And so it is throughout the boarding process.

JS: Great post. It is a pleasure to hear from an honest person.

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AAExecPlat; Lifetime AAirpass; 3MillMiles; UApremier-PassPlus

JFK, term 1, LH, sept-4-2001: at the end of check-in-procedure I notice that I got the boarding pass for 'Gisela Martel' (my wife was checking-in separately much later).

I only noticed at the Senator lounge and had then to go back to the (not far away) check-in counter.