How to Make Boarding Passes More Traveler-Friendly

This important slip of paper could be doing so much more to make your hellish travel day better

Dragos Vuia
Modus

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Photo: Peerawat Kamklay/Getty Images

AsAs someone who has travelled to 108 countries and territories so far, flying 35 to 40 airlines from six continents, I’ve had the chance to study airline boarding passes at some length. Being a travel and design aficionado, I go so far as to keep all my boarding passes, classifying them by various criteria and comparing the designs among airlines.

In my opinion, too few airlines pay attention to the design of their boarding pass. Lately, even the branding colors and the logo have disappeared from some ticket designs. Below is an example from Malaysia Airlines (until recently one of only a few five-star airlines in the world, according to Skytrax ratings) and another from United Airlines (sold as a flight codeshare via All Nippon Airlines, a five-star airline).

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Dragos Vuia
Modus
Writer for

UX Specialist & World Traveller | Former UX Designer at the City of Vancouver | Worked on Mobile UX for Walmart, Costco, Target, AutoTrader and Soluto.