Boarding Pass on your Mobile - Don’t forget to Charge

Continental Airlines is now testing the use of electronic boarding passes on mobile phones as part of a pilot project. According to the New York Times, the technology being tested uses a two dimensional barcode stored on a mobile phone which is scanned by a TSA (Transporation Safety Authority) agent and cross referenced with photo id. There is strong support for this technology because the two dimensional barcode uses a much higher level of encryption than the standard 1D barcodes (like UPC codes). The two dimensional barcodes can also store a much larger amount of data including (but not confirmed) passport or other personally identifiable information that is displayed to the TSA agent once the barcode is scanned.

So what does this mean for long tail suppliers? The opportunity will exist for tour and activity providers to send confirmation for activities directly to a customer’s mobile device. This could mean much more support for just in time ticket purchasing for destination type activity products, restaurant reservations, and attractions.

Sample one dimensional barcode uses lines of various widths to store an alphanumeric string.

A Sample of a two dimensional barcode can store up to 255 characters of data in a seemingly random pattern. The 2D code is much more difficult to modify (or tamper with) and fits well on a square mobile device screen.

The only drawback to using your mobile device as your boarding pass is that you better make sure your battery has enough juice to last the entire trip. I love my phone, but I’m a big fan of hard-copy backups. Call me old school.

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