As to claiming for delayed flights you were not on, you do still have to present your boarding pass (bar code) and that says who actually turned up at the airport. Unless, I'm missing something?
Not really, just replace "at the airport" with "at the gate". Every time I have flown as a passenger on either a legacy outfit or a LCC, with or without checked baggage my boarding card/scrappy piece of paper has been scanned, or my name ticked off a list
at the gate before heading either into the fenced off pen
or off down the jetty
.......
Anyone not recorded as going through the gate/jetty head is, I suspect, going to have a tough time claiming they were on a flight and therefore entitled to compensation, regardless of how they checked in......
MidlandDeltic
I assumed that when your boarding card is scanned at security
Not at many places, though the card will at least get looked at to confirm your entitlement to proceed towards airside, nothing more. Since T5 was mentioned I'll be (overly) pedantic and mention that at that terminal you self scan your card
before entering air side, i.e. before joining the lines for screening - (you're literally "locked" out of air side if you scan less than 35 minutes before STD on the grounds that you've left it to late to get through security and get to the gate on time). If you go missing after that "conformance" scan the gate staff have no idea where you are in the process - stuck in a queue waiting to be screened? sleeping? shopping? whatever... That's why the next (mandatory) scan done at the gate is the really important one since it's the only one that proves you are on the flight.