Have you ever printed a boarding pass? | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever printed a boarding pass?

bbryson.com

226 pointskilian54 comments

Not a single person making a fuss about a "non-standard" boarding pass is something I wouldn't have guessed at all. Happiness all around :)

Oh, for sure. I started reading this and kept waiting for the part where he gets tackled by TSA or something. Terr'ist boarding pass, can be used as a weapon, or something.

Faith in US travel restored by 1%.

This happened almost 4 years ago though. The TSA has gotten a lot more jaded and hated since then. I'd be curious how something like this would go down today.

I think the biggest factor of the "happiness" was the two airports he went through. I lived in Anchorage for six years and everyone at the airport is about as nice they can get. It is actually a pleasure to wait in the short TSA line. And of course the Twin Cities is the same way and I've had employees there go way out of their way to help. It is a lot bigger though so I can't say it is as much fun waiting in those big lines or finding the right terminal.

So... with that said, I think if he did it again today he would have the same result. If he tried at JFK we would probably read about his arrest in the paper tomorrow.

Wow, did not realize this was from 2007.

My first clue was "logged into nwa.com"

My wife printed half-size boarding passes to try and save some paper and we go SO much crap at every juncture.

Depends on the airport too. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pass like this accepted at CMX, but I would much rather keep my distance should someone try this at ORD.

British Airways still throw a hissy fit when ever you present them with an electronic version of the boarding pass.

Lufthansa for great justice.

Maybe depends on the airrport. For me, BA was always cool with boarding pass on the Kindle.

Heathrow T5. Everyone was accepted it up until the gate, at which point they demanded I had a paper copy, which they printed for me.

I'm not surprised. I've never been to Heathrow without having some kind of trouble (from missed flight, through lost luggage, to security having issue with my contact lenses solution).

Heathrow T1-4 of old maybe... Don't taint the whole airport with the same brush, T5 is an airport from the future my friend, been through there many, many times in the last 12 months and everything about it beats the best the US and Asia have to offer. I only argue because I've got out of their volcanic ash and snow be damned! If you want a bad experience, head to CDG, and see/smell how bad things can really be. Hell, they cancel flights just "because we can".

Haha, I hate T5 the most :/ Taking a train within the terminal, the longest security lines within Heathrow... no thanks. It sure looks purdy, but it's really hell to deal with. I don't even think it has mains sockets like the T3/T4 do.

I hate T5 so much. I was left waiting for my luggage for 3 hours once, which made me miss the last available connecting train.

I'm never flying BA again.

My French father-in-law who racks up hundreds of kilo-airmiles a year refuses to fly Air France because of CDG (he prefers Lufthansa).

So I guess you weren't fucked royally over christmas when one inch of snow brought T5 to a grinding halt? We received our luggage 5 weeks later and BA refused to reimburse all our costs (we lost a receipt for one train - presumably they think we walked and are going to pocket the cash...)

heathrow is seriously the worst airport i've ever been in, in terms of overall experience. and that includes some pretty dilapidated pre-renovation indian airports.

I'm flying from LHR T5 this week. Will try the BA Android app, which worked great flying from ARN earlier this year. The app displays a barcode they scan, so it's pretty much equivalent to using a PDF.

FWIW, everything went smoothly.

Sounds like the perfect front for a terrorist mission. Pretend to delight. Guard down, chaos ensues.

FBI, don't arrest me.

It looks like we've broken his web server. Here's a cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a4-v04...

And here's a working link to another site's reprint of the original:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227456-Have-you-ever-print...

tldr: Man prints out his boarding pass in large format. Delight ensues.

It would also be cool if you printed your boarding pass to PDF, but instead of printing a giant-sized version, loading it onto an Amazon Kindle and presenting that at the gate. Test Amazon's claim of being just like paper to the limit. Can't see why it wouldn't work.

I do this all the time going SFO - JFK on United. You get an email with a link, opening that link on a phone shows a 2d barcode. It's quite simple and the scanners at security and the gate show your name and the agent checks that against your ID. I was expecting the system to be somewhat brittle but I've never had an issue with it.

I don't think it'd work since every time I fly, TSA uses a marker to write on my boarding pass...

It would work for TSA, might not work well for your kindle ;-)

I can see a smart-ass TSA agent seeing your kindle and nonchalantly mark it with his permanent red marker, then in one fluid "kthxbye" motion give it back to you and move on to the next person in line.

You'll complain but they'll just reply back with Amazon's marketing line "It's just like paper!"

Pro tip: the solvent in whiteboard markers will dissolve most permanent marker marks; likewise whiteboard cleaner spray (though spray on a cloth rather than on the Kindle).

This is very true, I learned this yesterday when I accidentally picked up a Sharpie instead of a whiteboard marker. Colouring over the mistake with a whiteboard marker worked like a charm!

Haha, I bet that has definitely happened.

Welcome to HN!

Since your a new user I'll let you know that your being down voted because your comment doesn't actually add anything to the conversation, a comment of agreement should be replaced by, at most, an up vote of the parent. I know it cliche but please read. The guidelines, http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , otherwise you'll be hell banned very quickly.

If this was a regular comment I wouldn't say anything, but since this is likely a canned copy/paste you'll repeat, I'll be a grammar nazi and ask you to please fix it to say "you're" instead of "your".

Oh thanks, I actually did write it from scratch on my phone, it's not a comment I would usually make but for whatever reason I felt like I should. Sorry about that.

Edit: I've lost my editing power so I guess it'll stay that way.

I used my phone as a boarding pass once, scanned fine, they just marked my baggage claim slip.

Many major airports accept "boarding passes" that are actually 2D barcodes displayed on your mobile phone. I'd expect those would work on the Kindle just fine.

You can do this with coupons and an ipad at my local barnes and noble. (They just type in the number. The printed coupons never scan right anyway)

I was thinking the matte screen and e-ink would be more conducive to scanning successfully with a barcode reader :-)

Delta already supports sending you a PDF which you can show on your phone and have it scanned.

Did this last time as I was running late to the gate.

The Continental application for iOS allows you to just pull up your boarding pass on the screen and have the security screener scan the phone screen.

I would imagine that some of the other airline apps do so as well.

I can confirm that United does it with their mobile site. You would get a page with an image of the QR code and every other info they need.

(funny thing when I did it was that my screen had a few lines running across the middle of it, so I had to pull down the page and hold so that the QR code fit in the undamaged area)

By an odd coincidence, I just got an email from United/Continental offering to donate $1.00 to a conservation group if you use a mobile boarding pass on Earth Day.

I did this once (right after getting my Kindle, ha), and it actually scanned correctly at the gate! The trick is zooming it just right to get the barcode to be the right size on the screen.

I did it few times; it was accepted at check-in, but cannot be scanned at the gate (is is too tiny), so when the people at check-in saw it, they issued a paper boarding pass for me.

That may vary according to airline or airport. I haven't had any problems with it.

Works on the Amsterdam <-> Brussels train. It scanned correctly even from a mobile.

>> Can't see why it wouldn't work.

There is a great (no sarcasm) air company in your country, called Ryanair. Don't even try it with them :D

Actually, Ryanair is surprisingly open to technological innovations as it dovetails perfectly with their ruthless driving down of costs. Examples include ~100% of bookings and check-ins done online (before other airlines woke up to this opportunity), use of mobile phones in-flight (Ryanair gets a massive cut) and the wingtips on the end on planes wings which help save fuel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Past_fleet

I'm not sure if they do it yet, buy I'm sure I read somewhere that there was talk of Ryanair introducing the scanning of barcodes on mobile phones screens. Of course, you can't take any gossip about Ryanair seriously - past examples include €10 transatlantic seats subsidized by €10,000 first class seats, charging for toilet access on-board, in-air blowjobs (yes, Michael O'Leary actually said that!), standing section instead of seats.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfIY24BErBE

the sad thing is that my first thought was "as a brown guy, there's no way i'd ever dare to do that".

The article is down, but on-topic, I know bunch of large airlines(EasyJet for example) that let you present boarding pass on your smartphone so you do not have to print it.

Glad he had fun because that's kind of an expensive boarding pass. When I've printed posters at Kinko's before, it usually comes out to about $40 for a 1 meter^2 poster.

Reminds me when I printed a boarding pass in "2-up" mode. Of course the 2D barcode on the pass was half-sized and none of their machines could read it.

This makes me happy. =)

good one. I love it when take something and muck around with our expectations of it. Isn't that one thing art is supposed to do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com