Deal or no deal? Airline boarding passes via PDA

Forget printing out your boarding pass. The coolest way to get it is on your PDA or cellphone. You order up the pass, show the screen to TSA reps and they scan the bar code. Saves paper and time. Or does it?

I tested the new Mobile Boarding Pass, as Continental Airlines calls it, this week at Newark International Airport (EWR) on the way back to Los Angeles from a New York visit. It’s available in only a few airports. Here’s what I found:

Deal: I saved paper and so, I figure, helped the environment. Plus I felt hip and high-tech. It was pretty easy. For quicker upload from my BlackBerry 8700g, I accessed Continental’s mobile site, which also links to useful info such as flight updates, seat maps and standby lists.

I clicked on “Flight Check-in,” entered my confirmation code and followed the prompts to call up my boarding pass. Then a TSA rep scanned it with a hand-held device.

No deal: I had to juggle my photo ID plus my PDA, instead of just tucking my ID and a printed boarding pass into a neck wallet, as I usually do. So it wasn’t hands-free. TSA scanned the page smoothly, but Continental’s gate agent entered the data manually. So last century!

I panicked when, stuck in a seemingly endless security line, I couldn’t call up the Continental website. Oops. Back to the kiosk to print out a pass? No, I tried again and it worked. Note to self: Figure out how to save the boarding pass off-line in advance on my PDA, as Continental suggests. But I still worry: What if I get to the checkpoint and the scanner doesn’t work? Next time, I might try printing a copy of my boarding pass as a backup.
Next: Let’s look to this program expanding.

Currently, to use a Mobile Boarding Pass on Continental, you must be a single traveler on a nonstop domestic flight. It’s limited to a handful of airports, including Newark (EWR), Boston (BOS), Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) and certain Houston (IAH) terminals. Northwest Airlines is doing paperless boarding passes from Indianapolis (IND). I haven’t heard of any others.

And how about incorporating a biometric ID into this process? Then fliers could truly go all-electronic.

—Jane Engle, Assistant Los Angeles Times Travel Editor

[Photo: www.nwa.com]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 6:06 am by Jane Engle and is filed under Business Travel, Eco-Travel, Frequent Flier, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.