The Hindu Business Line : Mobile phone to replace airline boarding pass soon

Bangalore, March 14 Soon mobile phones would replace the physical airline ticket. Passengers would just be required to flash their mobile phone and gain access to the terminal building and speedily finish boarding procedures thereafter. For the airports, it would mean efficient boarding and handling more number of passengers.

Siemens Airport Systems Laboratory in Bangalore is working out a technology which would replace the physical boarding pass.

“This is different from the facility being offered by some travel portals and airlines currently. When you book a ticket, the airline sends you information like PNR number, etc as an SMS. This still means that you need to show it at the airline counter and take a print out. However, this new technology works just like Web check-in, where you can check-in, select your seat through the mobile phone and then you receive a 2D Bar Code which would replace the boarding pass. You could flash it at the airports where a reader validates it and so wherever required passenger will use this bar code,” Mr Ravi Shankar, Head of Aviation Systems, Siemens Information Systems Ltd, told Business Line.

Cost-efficient

This technology comes under International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) ‘Simplifying the Business’ programme, he added. In terms of cost too, Siemens said that it would not be much as in terms of physical systems only few bar code readers would need to be installed. The company was unable to give a firm estimate now as it is still someway to go. The company plans to run a pilot project with the same in India by early next year in the new Hyderabad or Delhi airports. According to Mr Shankar, Delhi airport looks more probable in the wake of forthcoming Commonwealth Games.

“We still need to finalise a carrier for this technology as it would require a GSM operator. Some infrastructure issues also need to be worked out like reader for the mobile phones at the airports and a server somewhere,” he said.

Deadline

With the events like Commonwealth Games there would be a requirement for efficient boarding and handling more passengers which the company sees as a good opportunity to implement such a technology. IATA has already set June 1, 2008 as the deadline for ‘100 per cent electronic ticketing’. The industry will save over $3 billion annually through the same, according to the organisation.

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