Mobile Boarding Passes
 

Surely I am not the only one who loves these?

Sadly my local airport does not accept them yet, so they don't work for routes starting here. :\

Does anyone know how widespread their use are at airports?

(I'd be particularly curious to know if they work from Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow airports if anyone knows!)

The GA at Houston was absolutely delighted to get a mobile BP.

His eyes lit up and he cheerfully remarked "I'm always amazed that these things work". :D

I see a few, maybe 5% in the US. Haven't seen anyone use them at LHR.

I've seen a good number at AMS!

I've used mobile BP's once or twice. I always check in remotely, get the mobile BP on my phone, but then when I get to the airport in time I still print at a kiosk.

Paper is still faster at the TSA checkpoint. And I'm don't trust my phone 100% to not rotate the image, go to sleep at the inopportune moment, etc. But in a pinch (e.g., if I was running really late), I certainly *could* do the whole process with a mobile BP. It's nice that the option exists.

The one flight where I saw a LOT of pax using mobile BP's was a FRA-MUC LH flight. Makes me wonder if they've advertised the feature prominently within Germany or their domestic security process more quickly handles the mobile BP's.

In that U.S., it hasn't been advertised much at all - just an email or two and then it's an option for someone who is paying close attention during check-in.

Use them on all my LH flights within Germany and Europe. Works great. LH actually encourages people to use it. Will try it on UA in SFO in July.

Cool.. So the BP is emailed as an attachment and opened up for show?

Does the BP scan as well off of the phone screen?

Unless you have a really weird screen protector, it actually scans better than some paper BPs, at least on AC (some machines print with ink that's too dark). It saves even the time needed to print them! Not always the best on Blackberries if BIS/BES is having issues though. I use this on flights within Canada all the time.

I saw people flashing their phones at SeaTac and Phoenix........ ;)

I used them for the first time recently on some UK flights with BA and they worked fine. Does save a bit of fumbling around although I do tend to keep these inside my passport.
You do get the occasional agent who manages to press the off button on your phone though.
95%+ of people were still using paper BPs.

I do like them although for special flights such as getting 1A when flying international first for the first time, I would rather have a paper BP to show off ;)

I don't understand why it isn't feasible just to "tag" a piece of ID (e.g. a machine readable or biometric passport, or a frequent flyer card) with flight details, so this is scanned at the gate with no need to bother with a pointless piece of paper or something that risks becoming useless if your battery fails.

Yes, some people might want a printout of departure times, but if they do they can just print their itinerary or view that on their phone.

As a boarding pass these days just contains a barcode referring to a record in a database, and as *some form* of ID is generally required to fly (with very few exceptions) and must generally be shown at the gate, I really don't see there as being any need for one at all, particularly not on "low cost" airlines where no seat assignment needs to be recorded.

Neil

That's true, your password/national ID card could easily be a boarding pass I suppose! I wonder if there is a good reason we're missing.

With QF domestic you get 3 choices:
The traditional BP, printed at home or the airport
A bar code sent to your phone
Use the barcode on the back of your FF card.

With the last 2 options, the scanner at the gate spits out a docket with your seat number to show on the plane. I think the mobile BP has become quickly unnecessary because you can flash your card.

UA/CO send a link to your email which you open on your mobile phone's browser. I open and save the page so I can load it more quickly when I approach security/gate. I've used them all over the US, but not in Europe. Going to have to try it for my intra-Europe LH flights next month at ZRH and FRA!

EDIT: OP, Aer Lingus says that they have mobile check-in (and assuming BP) on certain routes out of DUB. BA says all flights out of UK except LCY-JFK.

You can also access them via the mobile apps that most airlines have these days!

Am surprised BA says it works for all airports in the UK. I was under the impression that it is not offered at all to any flights out of Aberdeen for example... when I flew with KLM, I couldn't get mobile boarding passes out of ABZ, but coming back, I got them for the entire journey.

I do the same thing. This also has the benefit that my phone won't try to rotate the image as I'm rotating the phone to get the scanner to read it.

When I'm in email or on a webpage, flipping or rotating the phone causes the page to flip around and usually the image is no longer centered correctly. (I'm sure there's a way to prevent this but I haven't figured it out yet. Saving the JPG to my photo gallery is easy enough.)

Of course, I still usually have that paper BP with me too...just in case. Yes, I know that somewhat defeats the purpose. :o