The Seven Voyages Of Steve5d ago

I saw a young person ask ChatGPT how long their flight was today when they were literally holding the boarding pass with that information on it in the same hand that had the phone in it. ChatGPT spat out about 4 paragraphs on the subject when the answer was “40 minutes”. What a time to be alive

Edit: this blew up so I’m muting it now to save my notifications. No, I didn’t make it up for clicks, I’d have preferred fewer. Just a little anecdote from a tiring day that I’m trying to relax from now

Show threadMike McCaffrey 5d ago
@sinbad That does not sound plausible. Why in 2026 would a young person be holding a physical boarding pass?
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve5d ago
@mikemccaffrey amazingly they do still give them out
Show threadMike McCaffrey 
@sinbad Does not seem like a common occurrence, so I'm not shocked that a young person would not to think to look for disembarkation information on the document that is explicitly for boarding the plane.
Mar 16 at 6:10pmWeb
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve5d ago
@mikemccaffrey It’s just the default here if you check bags in, which they had done. It’s also your baggage receipt. Entirely possible they never thought to look at it
Show threadMarjorieR5d ago
@sinbad @mikemccaffrey in practice not so simple if where you are and your destination are not in the same time zone, as both departure and landing times will be reported in local time.
But anyone who thinks they need to ask an LLM about this must already be pretty brain dead.
Show threadMike McCaffrey 5d ago

@marjolica @sinbad For the 40 minute flight in question, that seems like it wouldn't be a factor.

However, I always find that difficult to figure out flight times in the moment, so I make sure to put the info in my calendar, so it acts like a progress bar as time elapses.

Show threadndevenish5d ago

@mikemccaffrey @sinbad most of the flights I’ve taken in the past couple of years have given boarding passes. Even if their apps support in principle they print you one to use instead anyway.

“Does not seem common” I assume only applies to the subset of ((US, Internal))

Show threadMike McCaffrey 5d ago
@ndevenish @sinbad Well, I suppose that I don't know how common digital boarding passes are in other countries. I'm just happy that I can usually get on a plane without having to interact with anyone but TSA.
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve5d ago
@mikemccaffrey @ndevenish I’m sure one factor is that even regional services in the US are pretty large. Whereas I just flew home in a plane with propellers and you have to walk across the tarmac to get in them
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve5d ago
@ndevenish @mikemccaffrey I guess an equivalent would be on this side of the Atlantic we might assert that issuing a physical cheque/check was not at all common, when in the US it’s still a more common thing (I assume, I haven’t been back in 10 years but it was then, whilst here we’d mostly got rid of them years before). Different regional norms are still a thing
Show threadThe Doctor5d ago
@mikemccaffrey @sinbad It's very common.