Your iPhone As a Boarding Pass

Apparently some have successfully used their iPhone as a flight boarding pass. Some have reported that they've successfully done it on American Airlines, and Continental. In fact Continental has launched a specific initiative to allow paperless check-in via mobile.

So how does it work? The key is to be able to show the boarding pass barcode on your iPhone screen. When it comes time for them to scan "your boarding pass" you simply present the pass/barcode on your iPhone, they scan it, and you're on your way. Really it should work with any carrier as long as they don't need to retain the boarding pass, and all they need to do is scan the barcode on your pass.

I'm going to try it with Delta, but I'll bring my paper boarding pass just in case. (At this stage you should probably bring the paper with you regardless of carrier.) With Delta I get the boarding pass online anyway and print it out before going to the airport. So, why not just bring the exact same image up on my iPhone screen and use that instead? A scan's a scan right?

This supposedly should work for any PDA that can show a barcode on the screen, as seen above. I would imagine that the iPhone should work better than most due to the nifty pinching, screen zoom feature thereby making the barcode pretty much as big as you wish.

So as soon as I give it a whirl with Delta I'll let you know. I seem to remember though that when you board on Delta they put the paper in a device that sucks it in, reads it, and spits it back out -- clearly not a viable option for the iPhone. Don't know if they have a scan "gun" as a backup. Hopefully my joy won't be spoiled by them sending me to an additional and more thorough security search :). If you try it out let me know how it goes.

peace,
-Forsyth