It seems that the testing phase is ending for paperless airline boarding passes. TSA has been testing this technology since spring. Now the pilot program has been expanded to 10 airports across the country.
The Paperless Boarding Pass Pilot as it is called according to TSA “streamlines the customer experience while heightening the ability to detect fraudulent boarding passes. Each paperless boarding pass is displayed as an encrypted two-dimensional bar code along with passenger and flight information. TSA security officers use hand-held scanners to validate the authenticity of the boarding pass at the checkpoint.”
Continental Airlines, the lead airline in the tests started in Houston, is now equipped to handle these electronic boarding passes at
* Austin – Austin-Bergstrom International
* Boston – Logan International
* Cleveland – Cleveland Hopkins Airport
* Houston – George Bush Intercontinental
* Newark – Neward Liberty International
* San Antonio International
* Washington – Ronald Reagan Washington National
Northwest Airlines is introducing the paperless boarding pases at Indianapolis International and will soon add Detroit to the list.
Delta Airlines has the system in place in New York at LaGuardia Airport
Alaska Airlines is using the system in Seattle at Seattle-Tacoma International.
Once the hand-held scanners are deployed nationwide, TSA will also use this technology to track wait times using standardized automated data collected at checkpoints. This development is expected to happen within about a year.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
