American Airlines Third U.S. Carrier To Use Mobile Boarding Passes

November 14, 2008 6:17 a.m. EST

Chicago, IL (AHN) - American Airlines was the third U.S. air carrier to tap technology to save on use of paper and cut ticketing cost by using mobile phones as boarding passes. It rolled out the service at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport Thursday.

Continental Airlines pioneered the use of cellular phones in lieu of printed boarding passes when it introduced the service in seven U.S. airports in December. It was followed by Delta Air Lines which launched a similar innovation in summer.

Aside from O'Hare, American Airlines plan to use the same service for air passengers departing from Los Angeles International and John Wayne Orange County airports by Nov. 17.

Travelers with confirmed flights on board American Airlines will receive their bar codes on their mobile phones, which they will show to security checkpoints at the Chicago gateway. In addition to having a cellphone, passengers who will use this feature must have an active email address and an Internet-enabled mobile device where their boarding pass and 2-D barcode will be sent. The system also works on Blackberries.

Airline spokesman Billy Sanez said by using the mobile phone another layer of security has been added to their system. He pointed out paper boarding passes are scanned only once at the gate leading to the airplane tube, while mobile boarding passes are scanned twice. The first check is at the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint and the next at the gate. It also guards against forgeries by using encryption technology.

In April 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama called the attention of the TSA over the apparent security breach at O'hare in response to an article at the Chicago Sun-Times that TSA uniforms, radios with access to a secure channel, sensitive security data and a cashbox were spotted by the newspaper staff unsecured at the gateway's checkpoints.