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.
We are currently the carrier for sms messaging and mobile air tickets for popular low cost airline norwegian.no
The ticketing and information messages have been well accepted by passengers, and open up new opportunities to communicate over mobile (since passengers are comfortable receiving texts from the airline).
One thing i noticed was missing from the article above is the environmental impact of this technology. A few years ago passengers would print the ticket they were sent in email. These often include printing an extra page of fine print, and often a page of special offers (rental cars etc).
This often results in a 3 page print for each ticket.
With mobile this is slowly being removed.
Norwegian.no send an sms with a link by sms to the 2D barcode on a mobile site.
This is read at special automated kiosks and a small boarding pass is printed from the machine.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers are using the service and it is a great success.
We are currently the carrier for sms messaging and mobile air tickets for popular low cost airline norwegian.no
The ticketing and information messages have been well accepted by passengers, and open up new opportunities to communicate over mobile (since passengers are comfortable receiving texts from the airline).
One thing i noticed was missing from the article above is the environmental impact of this technology. A few years ago passengers would print the ticket they were sent in email. These often include printing an extra page of fine print, and often a page of special offers (rental cars etc).
This often results in a 3 page print for each ticket.
With mobile this is slowly being removed.
Norwegian.no send an sms with a link by sms to the 2D barcode on a mobile site.
This is read at special automated kiosks and a small boarding pass is printed from the machine.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers are using the service and it is a great success.