Convenience is becoming almost as important to frequent fliers as cheap airplane tickets and discount travel packages. Domestic passengers no longer have to deal with paper tickets and the hassles and expense involved if such tickets are lost. Soon they may not even have to bother requesting boarding passes at the airport or printing out their boarding passes in advance of arriving at the airport.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is working with five major domestic airlines, testing paperless boarding passes, which allow passengers to download their boarding passes onto a mobile device, typically a smart cell phone.
Paperless boarding passes will not become common until it is both reliable and universal. There have been reports of phone browsers losing boarding passing immediately prior to boarding.
Currently many passengers check in for flights online and print boarding passes prior to arriving at the airport. Paperless boarding passes will streamline the time from entering security check points to boarding the plane, while improving the ability to detect fraud, according to TSA.
Continental Airlines was the first airline to develop software that encrypted a mobile boarding pass that satisfied TSAs authentication standards. TSAs pilot program for paperless boarding commenced in December of 07 at Houstons Bush Intercontinental Airport. The program has since been expanded to include five U.S. airlines (Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, and United) at 71 U.S. airports and Frankfurt Airport in Germany.
Passengers of participating airlines traveling to or through approved airports are able to receive a boarding pass as an email which contains a two dimensional bar code downloadable to a smartphone or other mobile device. The bar code, along with picture government issued ID is all that is supposed to be needed to get through security and onto a plane.
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