Qantas Platinum FF membership card as a boarding pass?

[BD1959]

No prob unless the printer chucks a wobbly or runs out of f'n paper at the gate.

Your well organised day goes out the door. Checking a bag, then always ask for a printed boarding pass.

Because I've been the victim of printer malfunction and paper outage on several occasions. You wait off to the side of the gate while everyone else boards until a staff member prints a full boarding pass for you at a service desk and brings it back to the gate.

Two totally separate processes. Regardless of whether you have checked a bag or not, you could still hit the issue of the paper-exhausted gate printer.

Are the check-in kiosks always empty? If not aren't you simply transferring (very slight chance of) waiting for a gate-printed BP for (more often) waiting at the kiosk for BP?? If time is your issue, seems you have your default process the wrong way around ...

Regards,

BD

 

[serfty]

I use both ... paper & QFF card ...

... only scan the member card though ... but have the paper one as backup ...

 

[opusman]

So it seems like a barcode tattoo would need to be at least 6cm wide to scan properly, I'm not sure my idea is that great after all

 

[Mule]

If time is your issue, seems you have your default process the wrong way around ...

Regards,

BD

I get around the airport quite efficiently thanks.

 

[anat0l]

So it seems like a barcode tattoo would need to be at least 6cm wide to scan properly, I'm not sure my idea is that great after all

I can see some other disadvantages:

• Depending on how old you are, that barcode may get harder to read as you approach your golden years. You might need to "uncrease" it when it gets scanned.
• If someone still has sensitivities to World War II, they might be a bit offended.

 

[Pleb Status]

One thing I have missed on the 'purple' side is being able to scan your FF card at the gate. It does mean they do not need the same amount of infrastructure to operate and maintain however.

Considering I have seen some very heated discussions about seat assignments on aircraft even when everyone has boarding passes, I would hate to see what it would be like without any written confirmation.

 

[anat0l]

One thing I have missed on the 'purple' side is being able to scan your FF card at the gate. It does mean they do not need the same amount of infrastructure to operate and maintain however.

Considering I have seen some very heated discussions about seat assignments on aircraft even when everyone has boarding passes, I would hate to see what it would be like without any written confirmation.

Mobile boarding passes shouldn't need a backup piece of paper, unless the person using the boarding pass has an irregular problem, e.g. the device just ran out of charge on boarding, the boarding pass for some reason can't be brought up, someone uses a fake boarding pass, etc.

The manifest should have the final run down on who is sitting where, so that could be used to resolve disputes, especially if that manifest data could be digitised and given to the FAs.

Finally, I'd like to know what kind of heated discussions could result out of this. I've heard of people accidentally taking the wrong seat (e.g. misreading the positions of ABC or one row off the correct row; blame it on ignorance or oversight) or obstinately taking a seat which they haven't been assigned to (blame it on passenger rudeness; a paper proof would hardly help this kind of situation). I can't think of the last time two passengers were accidentally assigned the same seat and boarded "correctly" at the gate. And passengers claiming that some staff member said they were given some certain seat but were promised to be seated somewhere else (e.g. "I was given 28E but I was promised by your colleague Carly a seat in Business Class once on board"), whether they use an electronic BP or decide to trash their paper BP, can be disproved with the manifest and passenger told they can shove it.

 

[ajd]

I'm a big fan of using my card, and I've never had any trouble with it whatsoever! It's great being able to walk in, go straight to the automated bag drop, 20 seconds later have my bag checked in and then go straight for security. Don't have to worry about pulling out my phone, don't have to worry about storing a giant printed BP. The only improvement they could possibly make is replacing the barcode scanner at the gate with a RFID/NFC scanner like on the bag drop machines, which would make the process about a second quicker, but that's incredibly minor. I do miss it on the rare occasions I fly VA.