Straight to Airport Security, Your Phone as Your Boarding Pass

Have you ever checked in for a flight using your iPhone as your boarding pass?

Completely paperless check-in—by way of a boarding pass with an embedded barcode sent to your mobile phone, which you then present at security and the gate—may be becoming more widespread, NPR reports in All Tech Considered.

Some foreign airlines are already doing this, and U.S. carriers are getting their systems into gear. Here’s how Delta explains the process; their blog has more about their pilot program, which they kicked off last June at New York-LaGuardia.

I think it sounds cool, and it could definitely save time checking in—if everything works properly. It wouldn’t be any faster than printing out your boarding pass at home first, although it would eliminate paper waste and perhaps make you feel fancier.

But I wonder if I might miss the perhaps soon-to-be old-fashioned paper boarding passes. Without them, what will I use for a bookmark?

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