Originally Posted by
boardingpass
Actually, it is! When you present your printed-at-home boarding pass to the gate staff, they check that the name on the boarding pass matches the name on the manifest, and sometimes cross-checks when they scan the bar-code (if fitted), and then matches it to your photo ID. So don't worry, you can rest assured we're on top of it.
I guess that's good to know, although I haven't seen that happen on any airline that I've travelled on recently (CX, BA, AA).
Originally Posted by
boardingpass
As for your old 'double wammy swap a boarding pass on an air-bridge trick', I'm much more worried about the quality of the Captain's crew meal as a threat to flight safety.
Slightly confused here. In an earlier post you said:
Originally Posted by boardingpass
then the cabin crew at the door checks you've been through the normal passenger route in possession of a valid boarding pass (i.e. haven't jumped over the airport fence to get onto the apron
So it isn't clear to me whether you're worried about this or not.
But anyway, as far as I am concerned this is all rather academic since, to the best of my knowledge, no terrorist has ever taken over a plane by virtue of pretending to be someone else. They all do it in their own name. Once a terrorist is on a watchlist then he loses his value and they'll just send another one.
The key issues for security (as opposed to revenue assurance) are:
- stop people accessing the cockpit (fixed)
- stop people bringing on board materials which could be used to destroy the plane (largely fixed, but with an overkill of huge inconvenience for passengers through the liquids ban, shoes off, and so on with no incremental benefit)
It doesn't matter if someone is on a terrorist watchlist if they are not able to bring onto the plane any means of destroying it.