Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan
noyb.eu
noyb.eu
You'd think a lighter touch verification would also serve this purpose?
A face scan provides all sorts of other information that they might find valuable to have on their clients.
I'm assuming agencies do that to lock the prices early on for the flights that they know will be fully booked. If airlines didn't do the nasty tricks with the prices changing every minute, this approach wouldn't work, though.
Name changes in a ticket are very expensive in low-cost airlines, unless it's like a typo.
Domestic flights in the US make extensive use of facial scanning, and both US and EU border agencies digitally scan your face to identify you (Global Entry in the US even means you theoretically don't need your passport to enter the country).
So why should we pretend like face scanning isn't happening? I can understand the idea that at some point, I won't need a boarding pass nor identification to get onto a plane, and at this point, it appears to not cost me any privacy that I've already lost over the last 25 years.
Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach.
I have seen neobanks requiring such 3D face scans but not Ryanair yet.
Completely understood, but the point is that it's at CBP or UK Border Force or Bundespolizei, and it's in the security camera system at the airport, too.
If you've been a visitor to Australia recently, you'll be all too familiar with the process of using your phone to scan your face plus passport data.
When you enter the airport, you walk past signs notifying you of extensive surveillance camera use.
I've recently flown with FinnAir and they never asked for my ID. All times I went with them. I just scan my boarding pass and done. The only day they asked me for my name is when I was the last person to board the plane because I was late for my flight.
It's true that they don't have competitors on certain routes, but they certainly do a large number of them.
third world banks have palm readers on ATMs for two decades now. amz is trying this on whole foods checkout
most government apps use face scan now, because google and apple limited access to fingerprints on the OS.
they will relearn all lesson learned by govts using numbers at random for people for benefits auth (like ssn) by using biometrics, which is the same thing.
Try booking on one of RA's cheapest flight offers, and you'll find that there are things you can't not book, like a seat on the actual flight(s)!, for which there is no zero cost option. There are zero-cost options for those things on the other price-points, but they remove this to try make the cheapest options look cheaper than the competition even thought they actually aren't.
(I assume other airlines use similar scummy tricks, I mention RA as they are the subject of this article and I recently looked into travel options for a future trip including them as an option).
(I swear some people would argue that if there was a 200% charge for booking 2 flights together that the other person should just go on holiday alone a week later...)
As far as I know, one can use the sphincter's unique pattern to identify people to some degree. Exactly the same way we can do so with iris patterns, fingerprints and even ear patterns.
So be careful what you wish for!
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Biometric-identification...
> New customers must also go through a verification process which, for many people, involves invasive biometrics.
"or going to the check-in counter at the airport more than two hours before departure"
https://noyb.eu/en/booking-ryanair-flight-through-online-tra...
Not a house selling contract!
Your demand boils down to having less options to do actions with the business. Options that already exist and come out of the box.
Having an account is not as scary once you realize what it is and what it represents.
No, I’m requesting, or demanding if you prefer, the choice. An account is a user convenience, not a business necessity. I’m asking why it is reasonable to force customers to create an account to book a flight?
In Russia where I'm from you need to show an ID to buy a long-distance train ticket and then again when you board the train. I was told that scalping was rampant before this was introduced which is totally believable. Which begs the question, how do European railway operators prevent it without requiring IDs?
To be clear for online purchases I think it's a nice convenience to be able to buy without requiring an account, but for flights it's an entirely different game, you often need to provide a lot more PII.
The point is that I'm not forced to create and manage an account and I can do a second purchase without having to remember or reset a password to an account that was forced upon me.
So basically, it’s the same way it has always been, since we’re in the climate change situation because of rich countries, and I don’t think a lot of us in poor countries care to stop producing CO2, it’s our turn now.
“Everything is gonna burn, we’ll all take turns, I’ll get mine too”
I just don't think this is an easy thing to resolve.
I’m not sure about the situation everywhere but China gouvernement seems to care more than most other countries, rich or not. They flew a commercial plane with SAF in September. I personally think SAF is a terrible idea but give them credits for willingness.
I'm glad when an authoritarian regime does something that ends up being good but 1) I still dislike the regime, and 2) I don't think that's something you can rely on.
Plus I'm pretty sure (just like everyone else) they're doing this not to avoid climate change but because they have a huge opportunity coming out ahead as providers of cleaner means of transportation (IMHO they already kick ass in EVs and will be the dominant player in this market).
But your point stands and has a lot of merit. What remains of my point is that I suspect most people in China wouldn't care about CO2 if up to them, and most of the rest of the poor/undeveloped countries will continue to not care.
I detest the authoritarian government but in this case it’s hard to feel bad if it actually works. Our strategy of letting hordes of MBAs optimize for the quarterly report is racking up future costs and unfortunately I don’t think we have the luxury of being picky about who’s going in the right direction here.
A better approach would be rationing.
If air travel rationing would ever be implemented, instead of travel becoming a rich person's hobby (which it already is, for a very loose definition of rich, a definition loose enough that it also counts people with in-house bathrooms with running water and waste disposal systems as rich) it would become a powerful person's hobby.
Not that different IMHO.
But, just to be clear, I'm totally with you. It's just that I'm terribly pessimistic.
What kind of gives me little moments of joy is thinking of what the 3000 version of "Fall of civilizations" podcast will have to say about what is happening now.
> It is estimated that around 95% of the world’s population has never experienced air travel firsthand.
https://www.ncesc.com/has-only-5-of-the-worlds-population-ev...
Regarding jets vs mass transport, I think it is misleading to oppose them. Remove all the jets on the planet and we’ll have exactly the same sustainability trouble.
My old dad points the fault of rich people taking jets to go everywhere, and also the fault of "billion of Chineses starting to take more and more flight". His bi-monthly usage of plane for Holliday isn't worth considering through because he "has no choice, people have right to takes Holliday and we-the-world-middle-class are not the problem"
They used to. When I was growing up, way before budget airlines, buses used to be the way you traveled around Europe for cheap.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint has data from 2022 for passenger-kilometers in the UK:
Domestic flight 246 g
Diesel car 171 g
Petrol car 170 g
Short-haul flight 151 g
Long-haul flight 148 g
Motorbike 114 g
Bus (average) 97 g
Bus (local London) 79 g
Plug-in hybrid 68 g
Electric car 47 g
National rail 35 g
Tram 29 g
London Underground 28 g
Coach (bus) 27 g
Ferry (foot passenger) 19 g
Eurostar (to Paris) 4 g
Moreover, this ignores the future: there’s a straightforward path to electrifying a bus which has been deployed in production for years but no proven alternative for planes.
Since essentially every activity generates CO2, what you are essentially saying is that life should be made as awkward and uncomfortable as possible.
And this certainly feels like the approach many eco-activists are taking, triggering well-deserved backlash. The Green party in Germany, for example, does extremely sensible politics in most areas, but mixes it with performative policies that are more about visibility (through causing inconvenience) than actually meaningful impact. So every time your drink tastes like cardboard as your straw is dissolving, you're reminded to vote for anything else. And "anything else" will most likely not enact the policies that might actually make sense (e.g. stricter carbon taxation).
I completely agree with your second point: the low-benefit performative stunts are so foolish that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the work of undercover saboteurs.
> life should be made as awkward and uncomfortable as possible.
I have a hard time seeing good faith here but let say you really didn’t got it:
What he is saying is that CO2-problematic activities should be made more awkward and unconfortable than those that don’t. A cousin view would be to make substainable options easier and cheaper that others. You know like various incentives measures used everywhere in the economy to serve other goals we set earlier, like keep some domestic agriculture or tax more the cigarettes.