Will cellphones replace paper at airline check-in counters?

Airlines may soon be asking you to ditch your paper boarding passes and instead check-in using your cellphone or BlackBerry, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The Houston Chronicle writes that “a new bar code standard” was announced Thursday by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), something that could “pave the way” to allowing customers to use cellphones and other mobile devices to check-in for flights. Several airlines -– including Continental and Southwest -– tell the Houston Chronicle they’re interested, but say the Transportation Security Administration would first have to make allowances for customers who have checked in wirelessly to pass through security without a paper boarding pass.

How would it work? The Houston Chronicle says that “instead of a traveler or airline printing a paper boarding pass and then having the bar codes scanned at airport security and the gate, passengers would register their mobile numbers with the airline and get text messages with boarding pass bar codes. They could then simply hold the screen of their cell phones under the scanner, and off they would go.” If such a system were instituted, it could be another way for U.S. airlines to cut costs. “You’re eliminating the paper completely,” Steve Lott, a spokesman for the IATA airline trade group, tells the Houston Chronicle. “But you’re also eliminating the need for a printer.”

Some airline passengers welcome the idea. “I would love it,” Tom Schrier, a Houston traveler who flies weekly, says to the Houston Chronicle. “I can’t always print a boarding pass, but I always have my BlackBerry with me,” he says. Some international carriers have already added mobile check-in options, including Air Canada, Air Berlin and Spanair. But Lott says that “in the U.S., the hurdle would be getting approval from the. They have some concerns about this.”

http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/2007/10/mobile-check-in.html

This entry was posted on October 15, 2007 at 6:58 am and is filed under Travel, USA Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.