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Continental Airlines and the TSA are expanding a paperless boarding pass program that they began piloting in Houston last November, rolling it out in Boston, Newark, and Washington Reagan National later this year.
It's a pretty simple concept. When you check in online for your flight, Continental sends a two dimensional bar code to your phone or PDA. No need to print out a boarding pass from home, no need to stop at the kiosk when you get to the airport.
When you reach security, you flip open your phone and show the bar code to a friendly TSA employee, who scans it with a special reader and sends you on your way to the metal detector.
The TSA likes the new system because the two-dimensional bar codes are tougher to copy than the older one dimensional variety, which makes it less likely that someone can slip through security with a forged boarding pass. People still have to show a picture ID at TSA checkpoints, but in theory the bar code scanners should speed things along a bit. For Continental, the program means less money spent filling their self serve kiosks with paper, and a tiny bit of positive PR in the environmental responsibility department, an area where airlines don't typically excel. So far, Continental is the only US airline to be taking boarding passes paperless, but Air Canada uses them, and Air France has a program in the works.
In other news, several US airlines will begin testing paperless napkins, paperless SkyMall catalogs, and paperless paper later this year.
Phone photo: Continental Airlines
2D barcode: Barcode resource
