Electronic Boarding Pass A Sign Of The Times

Passengers no longer have to dig for the paper ticket, or worry about where they put their boarding passes before checking in for a flight. Continental Airlines and the Transportation Security Administration launched a program to test using electronic boarding passes on PDAs or cell phones. The first of it kind boarding pass offered by a US airline is called the 'Paperless Boarding Pass' pilot program and was kicked off in Houston, Texas.

The program works like this -- passengers receive boarding passes on their cell phone or PDA, and are then scanned by TSA security officers-the paperless boarding passes contain a two-dimensional bar code that identifies the passenger with their flight information. The benefit of the electronic boarding pass is, first, it eliminates the need for a paper boarding pass. Second, the technology will cut down on passenger fraud. Third, it will improve customer service and speed up the boarding process.

"The deployment of the paperless technology signifies the TSA's ongoing commitment to develop and execute new technologies within aviation while enhancing security," said Mel Carraway, TSA's general manager for field operations, in a statement. The airlines and TSA worked together to develop the strategy to use the paperless process.

TSA created the paperless scan process; Continental Airlines came up with a plan for encrypting the boarding passes on mobile devices. It's not certain that the program will be used elsewhere, but TSA has expressed interest in expanding the use of encrypted bar codes.

In October, the International Air Transport Association introduced a global standard in October that lays the ground work for a check-in procedure using cell phones, smartphones, or PDAs and two-dimensional bar codes. The standard for a two-dimensional paper bar coded pass was developed in 2005, and is currently used for Web check-in.

By 2010 all airlines must use bar coded boarding passes, removing the need for the magnetic strip technology saving he airlines $500 million a year. Using bar-code--or mobile electronic--the goal is to get the airlines globally to use one or the other.

FMI: www.tsa.gov, www.continental.com