So how do we know that passengers who have checked in baggage actually board the flight if they can get as far as the apron and then wander off unchallenged and leave the airport via another route e.g. via the stand next door at airports like Stansted or round the corner and over the fence at many smaller European airports?
For example, I was at little ol' Zadar this summer and could perhaps have stepped over a few plant pots straight from the melee joining one low cost flight straight into the airside outside coffee shop terrace i.e. having had my boarding pass slip taken, and then used another boarding pass to board another flight. As it was, I made a mistake because I was taking a domestic flight and after passport control (which is after security of course) and walked into the international lounge.
To show how easy it might have been, I even had a coffee on that terrace and watched proceedings as I was early, but then realised that a queue was forming in another waiting area adjacent which I could see through glass. So I walked back to passport control - did a double take at a hand made notice that said "<-- Zagreb flight" and walked completely unchallenged from one to the other. Could I not have checked a bag on the international flight and then done exactly as I did eventually and used a domestic boarding pass to catch another flight?
This was all in the EU of course - it's a big place these days!
And that reminds me, what about that other Ryanair/Swissport (Stansted) practice of farming the gate queue to pre-check boarding passes so that when you actually DO go through the gate they don't have to check just take the slip they want? And given the proximity of other flight queues, and kerfuffles that occur with arguments at that immediate vicinity of the gate (now hitherto perhaps known as the 'slip and turn' collection point?
) about size of bags and excess baggage charges of what is it, up to £120* for one late-checked bag high season ?!!!!, surely there is plenty of scope for to-ing and fro-ing around the gate given that such heated distractions as can occur, may not be so uncommon?
As with many of these new cost saving ideas I think we are gambling, and treating passengers and crew as unwitting guinea pigs to risks that may not have been completely thought through ...
*Edit: I think it might now be up to £130 actually - remind me not to be so brave as to try to take a slightly big cabin bag to Tenerife 