Electronic Boarding Passes
Alaska Airlines and its sister company, Horizon Airlines have announced a pilot program to introduce electronic boarding passes into their system.
Electronic boarding passes are displayed on a PDA with a bar code that can be scanned at the airport. Continental began pioneering this technology but Delta and American Airlines have been testing it out at various airports over the past several months as well. All of the anecdotal reports that I’ve read so far seem to indicate that it has worked well and fairly smoothly with the only comments being that some TSA officers were surprised by seeing one but not unfamiliar with it.
What do you do if you cannot get your PDA to display the boarding pass? You can always get a paper copy by checking in at the airport as well. Passengers choosing this option aren’t at risk just because of a problem with their PDA.
Alaska / Horizon also introduced their new mobile website at:
If you’ve tried this technology on a recent flight, your comments on it are welcome.
Havent tried it personally, but several of my fellow cast and crew members have used it on Delta flights late last year. Seems to work reasonably well, aside from confusing the TSA Goons (but they’re easily distracted by shiny objects anyway) at the primary checkpoint.
Some individual scanners seem to have issues reading a bar code projected or backlit on the PDA’s screen, but in our collective experience, it seems like individual scanning units, and not a specific group or type en masse; possibly a dusty scanner head or a stray fingerprint on the PDA screen is the culprit. Expect the technology to improve.
-R
(who is still Old School enough to prefer paper)