Straight to Airport Security, Your Phone as Your Boarding Pass
Travel Blog • Rob Verger • 05.11.09 | 12:13 PM ET
Photo by 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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Rob Verger is a frequent contributor to World Hum and the site's former air travel blogger. His articles and photographs have appeared in the Boston Globe and other publications, and he's a former undergraduate writing instructor at Columbia University. If you like, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow him on Twitter.
Eva Holland 05.11.09 | 12:41 PM ET
Good point about the bookmark, Rob. I’m also wondering, without a paper boarding pass, what I’ll do when I’m filling in the customs card on the plane and need to know my flight number…
Alexander Basek 05.11.09 | 2:30 PM ET
I used this system flying MEM-LGA last month. Worked pretty well, except the TSA gives you a piece of scrap paper with their coding on it to hand to the agent when you walk through the metal detector. So much for eliminating waste.