Mobile boarding pass machine
 

I saw this video (not sure if you need a subscription or not) http://online.wsj.com/video/mobile-f...4B189D3CA.html and thought it was very neat for a few reasons.

1. It give you a quick print out so you have a physical document to prove you were at the airport.

2. Compared at least to the way they have implemented mobile boarding passes on UA and at the TSA counters I have seen, where the scanner is facing upwards so you have to flip over your phone and guess where the bar code is, this way you can keep the screen up so you can see where the scanner is trying to lock onto.

3. Not really a problem for me, though it lets you check in without having access to email or the web on your phone as it scans a bunch of characters in an SMS message as opposed to a bar code.

The only problem is the TSA requires an encrypted bar code. Not that they can't scan it and print the pass (which I don't for the life of me understand why they didn't put in printers for then), for whatever reason they don't.

It would certainly save somebody killing their battery in a delay and going crazy trying to get through.