Once upon a time, airline boarding passes were booklets (often hand-written multi-pagers for connecting or roundtrip flights). They had built-in carbon bars and pages of lengthy small-print legalese about airline and government policies and, if I remember correctly, passengers' rights. They were inserted into a sleeve with the baggage claim checks stapled onto them. Then came machine-printed cards, the envelopes went away (not a bad thing, because it did represent a lot of wasted paper), and now checked-bag receipts are usually stick 'em stubs still attached to the backing that I always hope I don't misplace in case my bag doesn't get off the same plane that I do.
Now, I am reading in "Upgrade: Travel Better" that "Paperless Boarding Passes Increasingly Widespread: Have You Used Them?" They are reportedly in greater use overseas than in the US, where only Continental is using them for inbound flights from Frankfurt and San Juan. According to Upgrade's Mark Ashley, "In lieu of a printed boarding pass, paperless passes are sent to your mobile phone. (Standard text message rates apply…) The pass contains both a barcode and text, identifying the passenger and flight. The square barcode gets scanned twice, once at security, and once at the gate." The TSA must enable security screening operations to accept this technology.
I have the cheapest, simplest cell phone on the planet, with a T-Mobile pay-in-advance plan, and I'm not about to pay for the privilege of having my boarding pass appear on that cell phone. Bad enough for passengers to pay for inflight food, checked bags, preferred seating and assorted surcharges that escalate even the most economical ticket. But I'm probably the Luddite minority here, and people who bond with their Blackberrys and iPhones and all that will jump on this as soon as it becomes available.
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