Thanks to the acceptance of a global standard, checking-in for your flight via the cell phone will soon become an acceptable norm. Passengers will receive text messages with bar codes that will be their boarding pass and will eliminate the use of paper ticket. The trade associations representing international airlines made this announcement recently. Airlines have been reluctant to follow this system based on mobile technology because of competing regional formats. The formats permit a passenger to register a phone during booking to receive a text message containing a bar code that becomes a boarding pass. The bar code can then be read directly from the phone’s screen. The International Air Transport Association standard will equip the new scanning equipment to read several regional code formats, including Aztec and Datamatrix, which are available now in Europe and North America, and QR in Japan. The bar code system is cost effective as well, a bar code scanner cost about €300, or about $400, much less than the €3,000 price tag for a magnetic strip scanner.

“This standard is an important step in getting rid of paper that bogs down processes and drives up costs,” Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of the IATA, said in a statement. The group aims to shift entirely to bar code boarding passes by 2010. Among the few airlines that now offer mobile check-in services are Air Canada, Air Berlin and Spanair. “This is significant because without a global standard you really can’t roll this product out,” said Lorne Riley, a spokesman for the IATA. “What this does is that it lays the foundation.” The association, representing more than 240 airlines, believes that it can realize annual savings of more than $500 million from the change.
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