Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Cellphones as an Airline Boarding Pass

Continental Airlines & Transportation Security Administration are doing a 3 month test in Houston that lets passengers board the plane with their cell phones or PDAs!

The way it works is that a bar code image is sent to the device (presumably from the airlines website or from a check-in kiosk at the airport) The image that's displayed on the device gets scanned at the baording gate just as the bar code on a paper pass does.

While the test doesn't allow for multiple passengers to board from one bar code, Continental is working on upgrading their system to allow for that.

While this is the first use of this kind of technology in the US, it's not the first ever implementation. Air Canada has been offering it since September of this year. USA Today reports that other US Airlines such as Delta and US Airways hope to offer this kind of paperless technology in the future too.

read more | digg story

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I haven't tried this yet. It sounds great, though. No more fumbling through pockets and bags, or confusing your first class airline tickets with your boarding pass.