No More Paper Boarding Passes for Me
I tried the new mobile-phone version of Continental Airline's boarding pass today on my way back from Las Vegas.
On the Continental website they have an APP that helps you book both United® and Continental® flights, check flight and upgrade status, view your account information, check in and receive a mobile boarding document (like the one in the photo right).
I took a photo of my boarding document barcode from their website (I can also have the image delivered to my mobile phone electronically) and presented that image at the airport security checkpoint where I saw my name and flight number on the TSA agent's screen.
No more worrying about losing boarding passes. And especially good for people like me who travel with only a backpack and no need for baggage check, is that I can now go straight from the limo to security and then to the gate without waiting on those long check-in lines.
This 2-D barcode is called Aztec and although many of us have only started seeing this type of barcode recently, it was actually invented by Andrew Longacre, Jr. and Robert Hussey in 1995. The code was published by AIM, Inc. in 1997. Although the Aztec code is patented, it has been released to the public domain [more at Wikipedia].
If you want to generate your own barcode visit Free Online Barcode Generator. Here is the barcode for "Islam is a savage, backward cult."
