I was just curious if this device serves any function besides tearing your boarding pass and giving you the stub-end (i.e. does it read anything from the bp?)

I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago. My wife and I were among the first to board and sat down in our seats (3a+b). About 10 minutes later, another couple tells us that we are in their seats; we compare stubs - they have the same seat numbers. The attendant walks them back to the gate with all four stubs. It turns out that their stubs were on a different flight.

You would think that having every ticket scanned at the gate would fix this issue - either the machine would complain that "the seat has already boarded" or that "you have the wrong flight number".

Welcome to FT. I think you will really like it.

The obvious answer is that you would think the gate reader would be up to the challenge of catching problems like the one you posted.

Alas, we are all too cognizant of the INEFFICIENCIES of the airline industry. Maybe someday....

I have seen these machines spit out boarding passes before -- generally when I've been handed a boarding pass at the last minute when waiting for an upgrade that did or didn't come through. During the last-minute seat shuffle, the seat I've been assigned has been assigned to someone else (for example, someone cleared for an upgrade and I got their original seat but they were never removed from their original seat). But I'm very surprised it didn't catch people on the wrong flight!

This is insane. A major purpose of the gate ticket reader is to check the passengers and to ensure that people are boarding for the right flight, that no seat is doubly assigned, etc.

I also believe that UA made a poor purchase with these machines. The UA machines are mechanical and break frequently. Delta purchased machines with an optical reader that scans a barcode; these have no moving parts and are much less likely to require repairs.

Of course, you could take the Southwest low-tech approach with color-coded, plastic cards. This is the simple and elegant solution to a complex problem.

Actually, they are capable of rejecting boarding passes for the wrong flight.

Once in Orlando, I switched at the gate from a later flight to the flight that was boarding at the gate. The customer service agent accidently gave me back my original boarding pass (for the later flight). I only looked at the seat number and proceeded to board the flight. When I handed it to the agent putting the boarding passes through the machine, the machine "rejected" it because it was for a different flight.

Sometimes, in the last minutes, the gate CSR simply lifts the coupon manually. If this happened, the second party COULD have boarded without having the gate reader catch the problem.

The gate readers DO catch the kind of problem that you described. They also can be used to "deboard" a pax if he/she wants to go back into the terminal to speak to the agent or make a phone call.

Actually, in my opinion, Southwest's approach is a cheap and irritating solution to the problem, and is almost exclusively the reason I avoid Southwest unless I have no choice.

The gate reader does work, but the gate agents (especially when in a rush to board) do not immediately scan the boarding passes.

DL and AA's gate readers can scan a barcode or scan a magnetic stripe, but AA only has barcodes on boarding passes from kiosks.

It should catch seat dups. What the reader does is basically input the seat numbers which have boarded, which they use to do manually. I am sure that most people have heard some CSR's using the PA to ask them to activate the reader on one computer.

If the machine gives a chime, in what I have seen they just take the ticket and lift it and then check the problem later after you have boarded leading to the problems on the plane.

When the machine has chimed for me, the agent has asked me to go back to the desk and the problem is resolved at that time. This happended at least 6 times last year. Leads me to conclude it's a training issue more than a gate reader issue.

The gate reader typically breaks down when it is unable to login into www.ual.com.

I've had it beep on me and I was sent to have a secondary inspection....

So the gate reader is pretty much down most, if not all, of the time?

LARRY-U-da man!!!