American Airlines Getting In On That Cell Phone Boarding Pass Fad
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Airlines Adding Advertisements to Boarding Passes
by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 15th 2008 at 5:45PM
Is nothing sacred? Pretty soon, we will literally run out of space free of advertising. Ads have already begun sneaking their way onto our cell phones, and they get attached to the tail end of our e-mail, so where else can they possibly be squeezed in an attempt to sell us something we don't need? Why on our boarding passes, of course!
No we're not kidding. Delta, Northwest, US Airways, United, and Continental have all signed contracts with Sojern, an advertising startup, to place targeted adds on the boarding passes customers print at home. The ads will be targeted based on length of stay and destination city, and eventually based on customers' stated interests.
Passengers can opt not to print the lists of events, coupons, and restaurant recommendations, but we're sure that option will be conveniently inconspicuous. [Source: USA Today]
Continental Letting Flyers Use Cell Phones As Plane Tickets
So the paper ticket is dead, and a new move by Continental Airlines could mean that even paper boarding pass may be the next to go. The airline is currently testing out digital boarding passes that lets you use your cell phone as a ticket.
Contintental's new system, which is being tested in Houston for the next three months, sends you a digital two-dimensional bar code, a square of pixels that represents your boarding info. Just display that bar code on your cell phone's screen, then pass the phone screen under the scanner and voila, you're ready to board. You've also save a tree while managing to reduce the number of things you have to remember to pack for your trip by one.
Continental is the first U.S. airline to test out cell phone tickets, but other domestic carriers, including U.S. Airways and Delta, are looking into the service.
Cell phones and bar codes are becoming quite the pair, with Orange enabling European phones to serve up advertising based on pictures of bar codes. That said, the whole bar code scanning tech seems a bit quaint. Why can't we just move on to global RFID tags already?
From USA Today
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