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Cellphones help eliminate boarding pass hassle at airports
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Let’s say you are in Atlanta and you get a call from your boss and he needs you to attend an urgent meeting in Salt Lake City ASAP. You jump into a taxi and on your way to the airport you pull out your phone, connect to the web and reserve and pay for your airline ticket. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a way to print your boarding pass right there in the cab so you could breeze through security as soon as you arrived at the airport?
This week Delta Airlines rolled out the next best thing.
It’s called paperless mobile check-in and it allows travelers to use their web-enabled phones in lieu of paper boarding passes. Passengers will simply hand over their phones with the image of a boarding pass on the screen to the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) officer at the security check point. The officers will scan the image of the boarding pass, and along with photo identification clear the passenger for travel.
This week Delta Airlines added Salt Lake City to its list of 8 domestic cities that offer this service. American Airlines, Continental Airlines and Alaska Air also have mobile check-in programs. Other Delta cities include Las Vegas, Memphis, Minneapolis, Detroit, India polis and LaGuardia.
Passengers will be able to use their phone/boarding passes at security check points and at the gate before boarding. Should the phone become incapacitated, a paper boarding pass could be obtained from the nearest kiosk or airline counter.
“This is most popular with business travelers and road warriors for whom time is a valuable asset,” said Kent Landers, spokesman for Delta. “It’s like a scanner we use at the supermarket and it keeps things moving quickly.”
Test pilots for the program, which was developed by the airlines with the cooperation of the TSA, began in November 2007 with Continental Airlines who first approached the TSA with the idea.
The scanning equipment was created and funded by the airlines. The reader scans encryptions on the phone image to determine if data has been tampered with and the TSA agent is able to verify passenger identification.
The scanning equipment was created and funded by the airlines. The reader scans encryptions on the phone image to determine if data has been tampered with and the TSA agent is able to verify passenger identification.
“Having electronic identification is advantageous for us,” said John Allen, spokesman for the TSA. “The reader will display whether the passenger’s information- date of travel, airport and name- is correct.”
