With little fanfare the TSA and Continental started piloting using totally electronic tickets using your cell phone or PDA. Of course I just had to try it out today. I sent the boarding pass to my email and was off to the airport.
So how does it work. I opened the email on my phone and it had a link. So you have to have a data connection. I clicked the link and was rewarded with a square looking complex bar coded. Along with human readable version of the boarding pass including flight info, gate and seat. The ticket has to be displayed on your phone. As I waited in the security line I joked with another board business travel that if the police come you know the thing either works or not. I was up next.
I held up my phone and the guard looked at me and then the phone. "Hold on please" the guard said. He then asked the other guard if he knew how to use the new scanner. The other guard did not. This is not looking good. A quick call on the radio brought a guard who was trained. He handed me back the phone and told me to bring up the ticket since the device had locked. I bought up the ticket. He aimed a handheld scanner at it and a laser scanned the displayed bar code. The trained guard showed the two guards "see the big green light says his ticket is good. You then verify that his id matches the name displayed." Since it did they let me pass through. Just like that no paper just my phone, computer bag, and luggage. Very cool! The guard at the archway did not even looked surprised that I did not have a ticket as I passed through.
I then headed off to the gate. Just to make sure I have no problems I ask the gate agent about my paperless ticket. The agent informed me she has taken a couple earlier so it should be fine. She then explained how they handle it. I would place it on the bar code scanner and slightly angled to prevent glare. If the ticket was fine they would see a little green light just like a paper boarding pass. After a while they called for boarding and I was off. It was little tricky at first to get the angle right but I got the hang of it. I board the plane.
Wow I actually felt like if this is implemented system wide there is real security. It could be very secure since you could use public/private key encryption to encode the ticket bar code. In addition, a pass code for the day and you now are pretty much guaranteed that only valid passengers have gotten into the gate areas. And this without major change to how people fly today. That bar code could be printed on regular boarding passes as well. Thank you TSA and Continental for trying this innovative method. Jet Blue eat your heart out. You might have Internet in the sky but do you have paperless!
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