[rubiety]

They definitely don't look. Several itineraries have multiple legs, and the TSA only ever looks at - much less scribbles on - your first leg. Even that aside, you can easily get a boarding pass from an agent inside the terminal, without it ever having been checked by the TSA.

I've actually gone through TSA with one boarding pass on one flight, and boarded a completely different flight before (not just a separate piece of paper) - back when I could book flights for free on JetBlue and had already booked another flight that night. I merely decided once I was in the terminal that I'd hop on a different flight I had also checked in to.

I do a lot of flying and have long though about this. It's total theatre. They could fix it by implementing some cryptographic code that's scanned at TSA entry points, verifying the actual document (boarding passes are a far cry from a verifyable document).

[estevez]

> They could fix it by implementing some cryptographic code that's scanned at TSA entry points, verifying the actual document (boarding passes are a far cry from a verifyable document).

Yeah, I tend to believe that they really aren't serious about it. It seems trivial to include a data matrix barcode that encodes the traveller's name and flight data.

[anghyflawn]

Wait, what? Are you saying barcodes aren't used in the US? Here in Norway at least all major handling agents issue boarding passes with barcodes, so you can board a (domestic or intra-Scandinavian) flight without interacting with anybody human except the security agents just by scanning the barcode at the gate. No idea if it's also used for security purposes, though.

[mahyarm]

The ticket has a barcode, but it's usually scanned by the airline before you board the plane. The TSA checker just looks at your ticket and your id, no computers involved.

[FaceKicker]

And presumably the passenger's name is encoded in the barcode, which I guess is why the OP suggests printing the original ticket with the name of the friend that bought it instead of just using the "forged" ticket at the gate. Though I'd also guess that the airline employees who scan the ticket at the gate almost never check that the name on the ticket matches the one displayed on their screen when they scan the barcode, so you'd probably be fine using the forged one.

[mahyarm]

This wouldn't work for international flights, since they often check your passport before boarding.