Southwest Airlines Is Doing Away With Pneumatic Tubes, Paper Tickets (consumerist.com)

As part of Southwest's biggest tech upgrade in its 45 years of existence, the company will doing away with several of its antiquated practices, including paper tickets and the use of pneumatic tubes to send messages at airports. Consumerist reports: The airline says the goal of these upgrades is to keep planes moving in and out of airports as quickly as possible. "We're looking for minutes," Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven told Bloomberg. "How do I save a minute here, a minute there? In 2017, we are more deliberate in our continuous improvement efforts." The new reservation system will allow Southwest to accept foreign money -- something its rivals can already do -- bounce back faster from storms, and have more control over price changes and schedules. Ramp workers will be getting tablets with real-time information to speed up airplanes' "turn time" -- how quickly they can deboard and reboard passengers and take off again. Tarmac staffers also won't be using pneumatic tubes anymore to send notes via canister about lost luggage and other communications to the cargo workers in charge of calculating jet weight and balance. Digital transmissions will replace that system, as well as printouts for workers who transport bags to and fro. Customers will be seeing changes as well, as the new reservation system means Southwest can ditch paper tickets altogether and stick with electronic tickets only.

Comments

Big tech!

[aglider]

Both the pneumatic tubes and the paper tickets.
it took a 5 year project I presume!

Re: Big tech!

[Anonymous Coward]

More like: The only remaining factory that made the pneumatic tubes has closed down and the airline can no longer get the parts.

Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

Pneumatic tubes were state of the art 160-odd years ago, so you could say "time for change". And the spirit of the times has it that the more electronic everything, the more automated, ICTified, digitalised, digitally transformed, or whatever the buzzword is this week, it must be automatically better, right?

Well, no. Why does "accept foreign currency" depend on not using pneumatic tubes? One'd think that it's much easier to transport foreign notes to the back office using a tube than scanning it or something. Or, you know, walking. We don't have zippy zappy star trek transporters yet. So the argumentation is a little silly, and that means that the real story is something else. We're seeing an attempt to "projectize" themselves out of some corporate inertia swamp. That's the real story.

I for me think that's fine and dandy but be careful not to throw out the good with the bad. Electronic-only boarding passes? How am I supposed to hold those? So they're now requiring me to carry a mobile phone or tablet just to hold that ticket? Doesn't seem a good idea to me. Especially since the TSA might^Wwill seize the thing if I don't allow them to take a complete copy of everything that's on it.

So I don't really care what this here airline, or any other airline, wants to do internally. I do care as soon as I have to bow and scrape to their internal procedures, moreso when that exposes me to entirely avoidable risk. Are they going to give out loaner tablets for the tickets maybe? If they want to be all-electronic-everything-rainbow-fartsy, then they shall have to. Bet they didn't think about that at all.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Zero__Kelvin]

99.9% of the people flying have a cell phone, but keep coming up with these potentially insightful thoughts. You are bound to come up with a point valid in this universe rather than your imaginary alternate one at SOME point!

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone has the money to buy a burner phone that is capable of holding an e-ticket.
And I am pretty sure that everyone is going to have burner phones when they are going to fly to america.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

So, lack $60 for a shit android phone from a China but have the money for a ticket? (Since I am assuming you mean people coming properly, if you think that customs is involved)

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Mitreya]

99.9% of the people flying have a cell phone, but keep coming up with these potentially insightful thoughts.

And the phone never runs out of charge unexpectedly.
Also, a phone would never refuse to connect to internet when you are trying to download your ticket in line in the airport (happened to me a few months ago).

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

99.9% that's a little high, don't ya think?

you really shouldn't take your main phone when traveling anyway. at least not in the u.s - and your prepaid throwaway you do travel with, you wouldn't to associate with any personal accounts.. in the not-unlikely chance it gets stolen, searched or otherwise taken from your possession.

and how are you going to show that you do have a ticket, when THEIR system fucks up? don't kid yourself, airline systems fuck up all the time.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think "electronic tickets" means "mobile boarding passes". Rather, getting rid of paper tickets, probably means the tickets where you are actually mailed a paper ticket that you then check in with at the ticket counter and exchange for a boarding pass on the day of travel. Almost all modern airline tickets are "electronic tickets" independent of whether the boarding pass is on paper or on a phone.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[drinkypoo]

So, lack $60 for a shit android phone from a China but have the money for a ticket? (Since I am assuming you mean people coming properly, if you think that customs is involved)

Try $30. Fuck, you can pay $40 for a prepaid Android phone in a shop in the USA. A Motorola one, even, the cheap little moto.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm sorry ... when was the last time a plane picked you up somewhere out of the blue, when you didn't know you were about to fly? I'm pretty sure your phone won't die "unexpectedly", and you are assuming that there is no procedure on place to handle this, which is flat out stupid. (You might want to think before you post)

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Zero__Kelvin]

That's a bunch of bullshit. Most people fly with all their electronics and have zero problems. I have NEVER had an issue. You are like the guy who sees a fire on the news and assumes the are dues blazing all over town.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[tomhath]

So fly a different airline if you insist on having a paper ticket and reserved seat, Southwest won't miss you.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Powercntrl]

Try $30. Fuck, you can pay $40 for a prepaid Android phone in a shop in the USA. A Motorola one, even, the cheap little moto.

Try $15 and change.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Net...

Damn burner phones cost less than the dinner I had last night.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[TheRaven64]

I'm pretty sure your phone won't die "unexpectedly"

I updated the apps on my phone before a flight a year ago and found that there was a bug in the SMS app that prevented the phone from sleeping. I lost 30% of the charge on the way to the airport. If I hadn't noticed, it would have been flat long before I tried to board my connecting flight. I don't know what their procedure is to handle this, but I'd imagine that it involves printing paper boarding passes, which requires them to keep all of the associated infrastructure.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Hognoxious]

Until some genius spots that burner phones are used by drug dealers & other criminals, and therefore comes to the conclusion that anyone using a burner phone is a criminal and should be shot on sight. Gotta keep America safe, folks.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[knightghost]

Have you seen how many people fumble their phones and hold up the line? It'll take 3x longer to board if everyone has to use their cell.

Paper works better.

Re:Rough edges visible miles away

[JaredOfEuropa]

The article mentions electronic tickets, not boarding passes. These e-tickets are little more than a reservation number in the form of a QR code which can be scanned from a phone or a printout to save a little time at the terminal, but the number can still be manually entered by the staff member if need be. A couple of times I've flown, the airline didn't even ask for my ticket and got my reservation on screen simply by scanning my passport.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're waiting until you're in line before downloading and screenshotting the ticket, you're doing it wrong. opening a gallery image is faster than 5 clicks through anybody's app.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

Or your frcken battery dies right before TSA line.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[DarkOx]

law of large numbers. Pick an aircraft with 140+ seats all sold someone is going to have problems with the device. It will be disruptive.

That said the article is about tickets, which are NOT boarding passes. For those who don't fly often let me explain: I can't remember EVER having a paper plane ticket. e-tickets have been a thing since the 90's even non-computery types usually use e-tickets because that is what their travel agent or secretary does for them. The general public usually books online. and you guessed is issued an e-ticket, which is really just a reservation number/code. They then just show up at the check-in counter and provide their name, destination airport, and the reservation number if they know it and the customer service person looks it up and prints them a boarding pass.

Boarding passes not tickets are what the TSA scans, and what the airline either rips (small carriers that server county airports and the like still do this) or scans at the gate, so they have an accurate passenger manifest and ensure nobody gets on the wrong flight.

Assuming this is talking about tickets and not boarding passes than I would say the time to retire paper ticketing infrastructure was a long time ago as its not useful and I can't think of really any reason why anyone anywhere needs to use. On the other hand paper boarding passes are nice. They are much faster to scan than trying to guess what distance your cell phone screen needs to be held at so they can read the QR code. I really wish people would not do that. When you use those dumb wallet apps or even the airlines own app you are holding up the line, you are THAT GUY and I hate you!

Additionally after a long week onsite somewhere when I am on my way home I'd like to be able to watch the airlines movies streamed over wifi to my phone or read a book with the kindle app and not fear that a dead battery is going to complicate getting on my connecting flight! Its nice to know I can just pull that paper pass out of my pocket and go, even if I have drained my phone watching "Die Hard 14 - People are still leaving piles of money in strange places" on the plane.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

And what of the pneumatic tub mainteneance guy? Just days from retirement, days from that boat, and now this.

Re:Rough edges visible miles away

[Nkwe]

I for me think that's fine and dandy but be careful not to throw out the good with the bad. Electronic-only boarding passes? How am I supposed to hold those? So they're now requiring me to carry a mobile phone or tablet just to hold that ticket?

The article talked about paper tickets not paper boarding passes. They are not the same thing. A paper ticket is a document that holds the value of your journey, it is like cash and similar to cash, expensive to handle. A boarding pass is a document that says you may get on the plane and on most airlines indicates your seat assignment. The boarding pass holds no monetary value. The boarding pass typically has a ticket reference number on it, but it is not the actual ticket. All other airlines that I am aware of (at least the majors in the US) got rid of paper tickets years ago, they all still have options for paper boarding passes. I don't fly Southwest due to their boarding process and lack of assigned seats, so I wasn't aware but was surprised to hear that an airline was still using paper tickets.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[thsths]

Yes, 99.9% have a cell phone. But: 0.1% of a few million is still a lot of disgruntled customers.

And there is the question whether the cell phone is compatible with whatever software contraption Southwest are working on. I know, they are pretty decent when it comes to software, but again 99.9% is not good enough.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Notabadguy]

Yes, 99.9% have a cell phone. But: 0.1% of a few million is still a lot of disgruntled customers.

Yeah?

Businesses would be THRILLED to have a 99.9% satisfaction rating - because there are ALWAYS going to be people who are upset about what they got / how they were treated /other. Professional complainers.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Bender0x7D1]

Assuming this is talking about tickets and not boarding passes than I would say the time to retire paper ticketing infrastructure was a long time ago as its not useful and I can't think of really any reason why anyone anywhere needs to use.

While 88% of the US population has Internet, only 77% have broadband. Dial-up would make it hard to shop for, and purchase, plane tickets. Plus, 92% of the population has cell phones, only 77% have a smart phone - which makes it impossible to pull up your electronic documents. Reference

Just because you can't imagine why anyone would need it, doesn't mean there aren't valid reasons for it. You just need a bit more imagination. I mean, we didn't even get into foreign tourists who might not have a cell plan in the US. The elderly. The disabled (ex: blind). Or people who do not use technology for religious reasons (Amish). Or who live where there is no Internet or cell service - at all (Nowhere, Alaska).

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm getting too old for this shit" - Sgt. Murtaugh

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Known Nutter]

When you use those dumb wallet apps or even the airlines own app you are holding up the line, you are THAT GUY and I hate you!

Yes... hurry up and scan all those boarding passes quickly so everyone can stand in line inside the jetway with their thumbs in their asses.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amish fly?

Are you advocating that we abandon progress for the majority in order to please fringe minorities?

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[SvnLyrBrto]

I would venture a guess that 99.9% is a low estimate for the number of people who have a phone. Regardless of what the actual number is though, I'd also guess that it is dwarfed by the number of people who live in the states that have refused to implement the REAL ID act and whose citizens are going o suddenly find themselves unable to fly at all next year.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

right, COPA airlines 'lost' my return ticket in Trinidad. They told me I did not have a ticket and I must buy one to get on board. I showed them my purchase at an online booking company on my laptop. That was not accepted, I had to have some number they use internally or contact that booking company...
After getting nasty the girl went 'backstage' for 45 minutes and came back with the number of my ticket.

But I forgive them, it's all clueless kids working at COPA...

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

RORO: if time is so precious then i don't understand why they don't use all the doors on a plane; roll off the passengers via the back doors, roll on the cleaning crew via the front doors, roll on the new passengers with an attendant inserted every Xth passenger to speed up the seating.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

(STS here)

Are you advocating that we abandon progress for the majority in order to please fringe minorities?

No, not at all.

The Amish drive buggies while most everyone else drives cars. They have that choice, just like everyone else, and them making that choice means abandoning neither choice nor progress for everyone. So your inference, while quite common and even fashionable in certain circles, is invalid, disingenious even. It is a pernicious error of thought unworthy of a would-be world-improver. And this whole digital thing is exactly about improving the world, no?

In fact, the way Americans have made themselves utterly dependent on cars has drawbacks of its own, creating problems that remain intractable until you do something about that dependence. For example, it is a factor in keeping your "working poor" underclass poor no matter how hard they work. Reasons why left as an exercise.

If you look at their reasoning, the Amish know very well what they're doing, and are willing to pay the price. There is no sense in wilfully upping the price for them some more, just because you don't like their approach. Them making that choice their way ought to be no skin off your nose. So why the hostility?

It's this sort of systemic thing that time and again is overlooked by those who trumpet "progress" while refusing to see there might be a downside to changing things rigidly into their way. While the new way might be good for them, it might equally well not be good at all for other people, yet the rigidity takes choice away. This is a fundamental freedom: Your right and freedom to act (eg. institute some new system or other) only goes right up until it runs into my right to be spared the consequences of your actions.

And "digital transformation" or whatever quite often ends up way more rigid than necessary. Why, I don't know, but I do know that such projects time and again end up taking away freedom and flexibility. And fixing that later then "costs too much", until way way way later it gets changed over at horrendous cost anyway. With a New! Improved! but also oddly rigid system. Meaning that the trumpeted progress is mostly a boondoggle and not actual progress.

So if for nothing else (though there are other good reasons that don't fit in the margins of this post), having some sort of fall-back that doesn't involve all that digitally transformative progress cruft isn't just advisable. You don't expect that people take that option much, but you have to have it anyway. If you can't build that into your system, it's an automatic fail. In fact, it's a useful bellwether as to how your wonderfully progress is doing. Too many people opt out, then what? Force them anyway? That's another automatic fail. Work out why they prefer the non-progress-y option and with that, improve your progress. Repeat until not just barely usable, but actually good.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're waiting until you're in line before downloading and screenshotting the ticket, you're doing it wrong. opening a gallery image is faster than 5 clicks through anybody's app.

Airport security might require a live connection so the e-ticket is accessed in real-time and JPEGs will be considered a fraudulent ticket.

Re:Rough edges visible miles away

[Darinbob]

Pneumatic tubes was still in common use even 20 years ago. The problem is that "state of the art" takes a very long time to get into common use, and when it is in use it's often nowhere as good as proponents claim. Capital costs and training costs will suck up the majority of savings here anyway, meanwhile the actual workers will be clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, pounding the side of the machine, clicking again, and just for one order.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Darinbob]

But how do I staple my phone to the expense report?

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

No phone needed.
You just show up at the airport with your passport or ID, and bam! The checkin counter was already expecting you (computerized reservation).
You can write down your reservation code, in case of any mixups.

If your airline doesn't use computers for reservations, you're overpaying for your ticket.

I've been flying this way for years, and never used the reservation code, but i still write it down. I mostly use Air Canada, but I assume most airlines already work like this.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[nanoflower]

I do not have a cell phone and have no desire to get one. I, for one, enjoy my lack of an electronic leash even though I have the money to get one and still have enough cash left over to get an airline ticket.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[default luser]

And there's nothing stopping people from printing their own ticket. This is what I already do with e-tickets, since I don't always trust my phone.

Re:Rough edges visible miles away

[markxz]

Pneumatic tubes are still common today in cash heavy businesses to move money from front to back of house securely. In hospitals they are used for transport of blood samples.

I would have thought the need for them is less essential in airports which mostly deal with card transactions.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true. There is no difference to the TSA if what you are displaying is a JPEG or an HTML rendition.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Gussington]

Have you seen how many people fumble their phones and hold up the line? It'll take 3x longer to board if everyone has to use their cell.

Paper works better.

Makes no difference how fast you board as the slowest part of the boarding procedure is passengers dicking about finding their seats, working out how to get their oversize bag in the overhead compartment, and holding up everyone else while they do this.
If anything they need to deliberately slow down the onboarding to give people more time to sort their shit out.

Re:Rough edges visible miles away

[arglebargle_xiv]

That was my reaction as well. What's next, will they be retiring their biplanes and closing the smoking saloons on their airliners?

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[DarkOx]

Those people STILL HAVE NO USE and probably NO ACCESS to paper plane ticket, unless they are literally going to the airport to buy one at the airline counter where they could still be easily issued an e-ticket!

Think for a second great aunt Tilly is going to go to her travel agent or make a reservation by phone (voice). They can then and in fact do provide here with an e-ticket and the reservation number. Hell even if they have to mail of fax her, the travel documents it can still just have an e-ticket number printed on it that she can read off at the check-in counter using the same process the rest of us use.

I meant it when I said there is no reason anyone needs a paper ticket. Considering all the classes of people you mention I still can't see a use case for any of them being given a 'traditional' airline ticket. My mother has some in he scarp book for her travels as a child that is the only time I have even seen paper tickets (I am in my mid thirties). These things only even exist today for the people that go out of their way to get them.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[cthulhu11]

This is why I won't rely on them. Or when you get delayed for hours and your battery runs out because either you didn't carry a charger, or someone else is already camped out at all three of the outlets in the entire terminal.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[cthulhu11]

Or board sanely. That means getting rid of half a dozen phases of special priority boarding, and instead board from the back and sides first. If facilities and weather permit, board from the back door as well.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Southwest, they've already eliminated that with the cattle call system which encourages those to grab the first reasonable seat available - generally it flows front to back window/aisle and then the last third fills in the middle seats. It is FAR faster than conventional airline boarding in my experience.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Gussington]

Or board sanely. That means getting rid of half a dozen phases of special priority boarding, and instead board from the back and sides first. If facilities and weather permit, board from the back door as well.

I was on an Emirates A380 flight in Prague when they announced they'd board in sections. Sweet I thought, stack the back rows first, working forward, creating an organised boarding process. Well some fucktard read the instructions wrong and decided to load the front sections first, then called the section immediately behind after it. The result was pure chaos and the flight got delayed by 30 minutes due to ensuing mess. I just don't understand how something so simple can be done so wrong so often.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[kaatochacha]

My dad does NOT have a cell phone with anything other than phone capability.
Yes, he's old. But that's like saying "No access for wheelchairs, if you wanna fly, you gotta walk"

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[kaatochacha]

I'm pretty sure your phone won't die "unexpectedly"

bwahahahahahahaha!. I'm sorry, that's the funniest thing I've read all day.
https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[kaatochacha]

Thanks, I hadn't thought ticket/boarding pass. You're right, I haven't had a paper ticket in forever.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[cthulhu11]

Wince. Families traveling together might need divergence from optimal, but the successive waves of FFM tiers, active military who are rarely present, etc. are a bit much, especially when most travelers don't really have much of a choice what airline they fly. I've at times had gate agents hassle me about boarding with a special-needs child FFS, but salespeople who've never heard of webex? Please.

Re: Rough edges visible miles away

[Gussington]

Uh, we're you replying to me?

Only now?

[johannesg]

By the time they get rid of the pneumatic tubes for tickets for people, Elon Musk will be selling tickets for pneumatic tubes for people...

Re:Only now?

[Rei]

Normally I wouldn't respond, because I'd think that most people would be able to recognize a joke... but because whenever Hyperloop comes up people actually seem to think that it is a pneumatic tube system...

1) Hyperloop Alpha is not a pneumatic tube system. The capsules are not pushed by pressure. Quite the opposite, the tubes are a partial vacuum. Capsules are propelled by short accelerator segments, then spend most of the trip drifting (except for at very low speeds at each end, where it settles down onto electrically-driven wheels).

And for the other side of the spectrum...

2) Hyperloop Alpha is not a maglev vactrain. It is neither maglev nor a vactrain. More to the point, it can't even function in a hard vacuum. Lift is provided not by maglev, but by an airbearing; it's a very-close ground effect aircraft. Because it's not a hard vacuum, air builds up ahead of it; it uses a compressor to shunt the air to behind it and to boost the air bearings.

((Insert "The More You Know" rainbow here))

Re:Only now?

[jenningsthecat]

...whenever Hyperloop comes up people actually seem to think that it is a pneumatic tube system...

1) Hyperloop Alpha is not a pneumatic tube system. The capsules are not pushed by pressure. Quite the opposite, the tubes are a partial vacuum.

So is it fair to say that Hyperloop sucks and a pneumatic tube system blows?

Please don't ditch paper completely

[TFlan91]

I love digital tickets, but sometimes, on long journeys, i like the reassurance of having a paper ticket in case anything happens to my phone.

Re:Please don't ditch paper completely

[Anonymous Coward]

I love digital tickets, but sometimes, on long journeys, i like the reassurance of having a paper ticket in case anything happens to my phone.

That's why I always bring my previous phone as a spare when I travel. Being without a phone on a trip would be a huge problem for lots of other reasons than the ticket as well.

Re: Please don't ditch paper completely

[dj245]

I fly Southwest almost exclusively and I always get the paper ticket. I am often on a phone call during boarding and someone who scans 1000s of tickets a day will always be faster at me at scanning the ticket.

Re: Please don't ditch paper completely

[hobbes vs boyle]

TFA mentions *tickets* only, not boarding passes. May be sloppy language on their end. But if not: I haven't seen a paper airline ticket in ages.

Re:Please don't ditch paper completely

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha!

No, you misunderstand. You must be under 35 or so.

Back in the 20th century, Airlines issues paper tickets. They're like a ticket to a play, sporting event. etc. They mailed you these tickets. Everyone freaked out about losing them or forgetting them. If you lost them or forgot them, you had to buy another one. It sucked.

Then sometime in the 90s or so, the airlines switched to all electronic tickets. They were tied to your identity. What you're talking about it a "boarding pass". Those aren't going away.

It's incredibly shocking though that Southwest still has this relic of the 20th century.

Re:Please don't ditch paper completely

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I really dislike this "tied to my identity" thing. It means that if I lose that one other thing, that identity card, I don't merely get to buy new tickets, I also get to talk to the police, and various other officials. First to tell'em my identity documents got stolen or lost, then to try and get new papers. And "identity" is incredibly easy to abuse, giving rise to a whole host of other problems. The more things are tied to my identity, the hotter that one government-issued this-person-exists card becomes. In fact by tying all sorts of things to "identity", my identity has become a target of convenience to all sorts of wrong-doers.

That is, while it's likely nobody is out to do harm to specifically me, if they get their grubby mitts on someone's identity, which turns out to be mine, I'm still fscked hard and good. And for a good long while since that sort of abuse is incredibly hard to recover from.

So like cash vs. card: lose the cash and that's sad but limited exactly to the amount of cash you lost; lose the card and while you might end up reimbursed completely, this is entirely at the fickle whim of the issuing company and with damages that may rack up quite a bit higher than the cash you carried. With your identity, there's no inherent limit, and no friendly card issuing company covering for you at all, ever. So losing that ticket, while sad, might well be the better and safer calamity, with a much lower damage ceiling.

As far as risk assessment goes, I'll take the "awfully dangerous" nameless ticket over the in actuality much more pernicious tied-to-identity option. But of course, in today's world that sort of thing immediately flags me as a terrorist. On another note: There was this fugitive terrorist running around Europe lately. Turns out he had 14 identities on him when finally --and it took a while!-- caught. So much for tieing to identity making anything safer.

As a sidenote: At the moment I'm relatively safe from that sort of abuse because no valid identity card in my name currently exists. I did ask by own government to re-issue one, but they refused. This means I don't get to vote, I can't work legally, most places I can't even rent anything whatsoever including some place to stay, I can't get those famous European social security benefits, heck, I can't get medical care. Not even dental care where I offer to pay in cash up front right there. No card, you don't exist, fsck off. I'm sorely tempted to apply for asylum in this lousy country of my birth, just to see their heads explode. And of course the free priority housing and washing machines the entirerly paperless "refugees" get. "Refugees" because at least a third of them come from deemed "safe" countries and are simply buggering out of their mud holes seeking easy fortune, but our poor civil servant clerks can't just toss out applicants on obvious inelegibility, certainly not those of mediteranean complexion. It's the rules, you know. But anyway.

So no, tieing to identity is a pretty shoddy cop-out and therefore failure of proper systems design. Its prevalence says really bad things about the people who keep on coming up with such schemes. It starts with "apparently their brains are entirely non-functional" and it goes downhill from there.

Re:Please don't ditch paper completely

[rtb61]

Digital cargo handling, hmm, internet of things. You go north, your luggage goes south, to be picked up by someone else ;).

Re:Please don't ditch paper completely

[Gussington]

I love digital tickets, but sometimes, on long journeys, i like the reassurance of having a paper ticket in case anything happens to my phone.

You still have this option, the responsibility of printing is merely shifting from them to you if you so choose.

Re: Please don't ditch paper completely

[Gussington]

I fly Southwest almost exclusively and I always get the paper ticket. I am often on a phone call during boarding and someone who scans 1000s of tickets a day will always be faster at me at scanning the ticket.

They still scan the ticket, you merely hand them a phone instead of a piece of paper. Everything else is the same.
If you're a rude enough person that you are on the phone during this transaction you can always say "one sec, I'm just scanning my boarding pass". it literally takes 3 secs max. Crisis averted...

Meanwhile...

[hyades1]

Somewhere in Russia, a team of hackers are licking their chops.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Bert64]

Well doing something last means you should be able to learn from the mistakes made by others, and therefore not be saddled with lots of unmaintainable legacy cruft...
Unfortunately, late adopters seem to want to just copy everyone else - mistakes and all.

Re:Meanwhile...

[hyades1]

That is one of the wisest comments I've read here in a while!

Re:Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere in America, a team of scared fucking rabbits is wetting themselves over the Big Bad Russians(tm)

Re:Meanwhile...

[Gussington]

Somewhere in Russia, a team of hackers are licking their chops.

At what? That Southwest are now doing the same thing that every other airline in the western world has been doing for years? None of this is new...

accept foreign money???

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never flown Southwest, but don't most people pay by credit/debit card these days?

Credit/debit cards work just fine in foreign countries and foreign currency.

I was once traveling in Portugal, and was explaining to my grandfather that it was easy to take money out of a local bank machine. This was 1995.

Re:accept foreign money???

[Anonymous Coward]

You always pay a crappy exchange rate when you use your card. Plus sometimes a fee. It is a money maker for the CC companies. You got scammed.

E-tickets have limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when Granny can't get an e-ticket to work on her Jitterbug flip-phone? Paper tickets will still exist as a fallback - or at least printouts of an e-ticket made at the service counter.

Re: E-tickets have limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting granny to fly another airline is the absolute BEST way to improve turnaround efficiency and improve service. I fly twice a week, usually Southwest, and those nasty old harpies take forever to get seated (are they f'ing cats?!).

And heaven forbid you have a connecting flight. They'll putter about for several minutes with their SUV-sized hind quarters blocking the aisle as they double, triple, and quadruple check that they truly have the hundreds of personal items they've disgorged from their carryons during the flight!

Re:E-tickets have limitations

[tomhath]

When is the last time you needed to show a paper ticket to get your boarding pass? Just insert a credit card or driver's license into the kiosk and it finds the ticket for you.

Re:E-tickets suck...unless you print them

[pscottdv]

I agree. And the best way to print out your boarding pass while travelling is to use the Southwest kiosk at the airport.

Won't be more reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times a month will IT take down your Windows domain controller for maintenance? I think I'd rather have a pneumatic tube system than modern Ethernet.

Re:Won't be more reliable

[TWX]

To nitpick, since you've opened yourself up for it, the Windows Domain Controller and the AD domain is not the same as Ethernet, and isn't even the same thing as TCP/IP. On top of that, if Southwest uses AD, they are not limited to a single DC, nor to DCs in one geographic area or site to span their entire domain across the WAN.

Granted, it takes time and arguably money to design a network and directory services system that can handle the fault-tolerance they would need, but if they spend their time and money wisely they can probably achieve a network that can handle segment drops due to weather and other problems that inevitably affect wide area networks.

Internet Piping

[pipingguy]

So they're replacing one system of tubes with another system of tubes?

Big Texas Company Way Of Doing Business

[RyanRife8866]

I'm not sure if it's like this everywhere, but it seems like all of the large Texas corporations are extremely slow at adopting new technology and are struggling to compete with the modern world. I work for one and we struggle to make 5 updates to our web site per year....and that's with dozens of employees and contractors doing work.

Re:Big Texas Company Way Of Doing Business

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just Texas -- there are a lot of successful businesses that don't change a whole lot. You just don't read about them in MBA case studies or airport bookstore business books. Usually, it takes established businesses a long time to ditch a process or system that is working. Plenty of medium businesses around where I live are totally living in the 70s and 80s both technology and process-wise. One very successful local retailer of kitchen and bath fixtures still runs ads in the paper that look like someone designed them 40 years ago and they're always busy. I know someone who works for them and the owner is a crusty old guy who has consistently made money for decades and just doesn't change anything unless there's a guaranteed return on investment or legitimate need to do so. Same thing with local oil companies -- again, guaranteed money makers since everyone needs heating oil -- and they still hand-address envelopes, address everyone as "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith", manually record sales, etc. -- most likely at the insistence of a guy who's been doing the same thing for ages and doesn't want to mess with a formula that works.

Not paper boarding passes, paper tickets

[ErichTheRed]

I work in the airline IT world. "Paper tickets" aren't the paper boarding passes you print out at the kiosk. These are actual tickets issued at travel agents or airport ticket counters, and go back to a time when you could buy a ticket independent of a reservation or seat assignment. In fact, travel agents used to be able to manually hand-write them and the only thing keeping them secure was that ticket stock was controlled. It's similar to buying a train ticket for a commuter railroad from the machine at the station...unless you're reserving a seat, you can exchange it for a seat on whatever train you get on. Same went for paper tickets -- if you had a ticket that said "JFK to LAX" you could go to the airport and check in on any flight if you had an open reservation.

The article mentions that they're doing this to get rid of paper buddy passes, which really are the only paper tickets most domestic airlines deal with these days. It's incredibly rare to process paper tickets for passengers these days.

WTF???

[Anonymous Coward]

Beau, are you to busy sucking on some DICE individuals that you cant realize the crap your posting??
Once again How is this newz for Nerdz?
"the consumerist" Fucking please.
its people like u whom are killing this publication

No More Pneumatic Tubes?

[PPH]

Well, that sucks!

Re:No More Pneumatic Tubes?

[Szeraax]

Actually, it will suck less than it does now...

Tubes

[Patent Lover]

Looks like their replacing their pneumatic tubes with those internet tubes that get clogged with emails.

End of an Era

[saccade.com]

Ah, pneumatic tubes. Explains this bizarre label I saw taped to the wall at a Southwest get at LAX: https://twitter.com/isonno/sta...

Boarding time improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

All the time I have been flying the longest time seems to be the time it takes for people to get into the plane and sit down. Apparently a large percentage will block the aisle while stowing their hand luggage, taking off jacket, taking out hand luggage again to find the phone charger, etc etc.

Same on exit.

Would be nice to have new eyes on this process.

lost luggage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bug? I thought it's a long time feature.

Does this mean...

[martinfb]

Does this mean that my seat will not get smaller (again)?!