Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught

Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by themoonisachees on Friday April 12, 2024 @05:13AM (#40010740)

In this specific case, it's quite possible that the gate agent, being a costumer service worker, didn't want a fuss. If someone comes to a gate agent with a boarding pass, they're most likely not double-spending the pass, and suggesting otherwise to them would be a quick way to a tweet saying "today I bought a plane ticket, and when I tried boarding I was told I already boarded and they refused to reimburse me, do not fly [airline]". Of course it would have been the "correct" course of action here but as someone who has interacted with The Public, the gate agent did their best.

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Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by ethbr1 on Friday April 12, 2024 @12:18PM (#40014596)

Beyond that, the UX of this is always subverted by incentives.

The system's incentive: (1) make sure no pass is used to board more than once, (2) indicate whether all ticketed passengers have boarded, and if not which are missing

The gate agent's incentive: (1) board everyone as pleasantly and quickly as possible

So the errant boarder played on the misaligned incentives and time pressure, to bet that the gate agent would ignore any errors.

I'm incredibly distrustful of any system that requires:

   - Someone deal with a rare situation
   - In realtime
   - Under pressure
   - While not being incentivized against an adverse outcome

"Well, the person didn't do what they were supposed to in the 1-in-1,000,000 situation" isn't a valid design strategy. (See self-driving-car-interventions and TSA agents)

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Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by dfxm12 on Friday April 12, 2024 @01:21PM (#40015335)

Another interesting question is: What were they supposed to do? Does Delta even have procedures for what to do in this 1-in-1,000,000 situation?

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Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by hnfong on Friday April 12, 2024 @03:32PM (#40016773)

If the adverse outcome of a 1-in-1000000 situation was somebody possibly sneaking onto a plane and gets a free ride, I'd say just leave it as-is.

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Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by drewcoo on Friday April 12, 2024 @05:08PM (#40017677)

Incentive implies a choice can be made.

No one tips a lawnmower for a really tight trim. The lawnmower manufacturer may have worried about that but the lawnmower itself doesn't even worry.

Likewise, the dumb software the agents are using is not making decisions or incentivized.

Now if it were AI, we might worry . . .

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Re:Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught by wiml on Saturday April 13, 2024 @02:32PM (#40025046)

They are being incentivized against an adverse outcome: the outcome of a paying passenger (or a whole planeload of paying passengers) missing their flight, connections, etc. That's why they make the decisions they do.

Accidentally carrying a non-paying passenger on an underbooked flight is also adverse I guess but it's not the only way the system can err and it's not the only thing they are trying to avoid.

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