Funny- this exact same thing almost happened to my sister a ~week ago. She boarded the wrong airplane (although the scanner beeped without any errors). Luckily, after sitting in the plane for 5 minutes, she realized that she had boarded the wrong plane. Her flight had changed gates.
Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?
From the numerous comments here, it's not matching the boarding pass to the flight or gate. Is it just boarding group? Is it that "yes, this is a valid ticket" or something else entirely?
Seems like an easy way to "disappear" - basically book a fight going somewhere, look around until you find a flight with open seats (Southwest would be best as no assigned seating), and then... poof?
> Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?
That's the question that's been nagging me since the day I read about this particular mistake. I wonder if there are any active public subreddits of airline workers; somewhere where I could hear a first-hand account of what those scanners are checking.
