Continental sending boarding passes to cell phones

So you are in Philadelphia, traveling on Continental Airlines and you hate paper, waiting at airport kiosks, and lines at the ticket counter.

You're in luck. Starting today Continental passengers in Philadelphia who go to the airline's Web site within 24 hours of their flights can get their boarding passes e-mailed to cell phones or personal digital assistants, like a BlackBerry or Palm.

The paperless boarding pass has an encrypted tamper-proof bar code, identifying the passenger, and the usual information - flight number, seat assignment, gate, and departure time.

Chalk it up to concern about the environment - saving trees - but more to the fact that we live in an electronic age, and increasingly people have cell phones and mobile devices connected to the Web.

Continental was the first U.S. carrier to debut the paperless boarding pass in December 2007, in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Since then, more than 850,000 Continental customers have used it.

Five airlines now offer the option, including American, Delta, Northwest and Alaska Airlines, at 35 U.S. airports.

TSA said the new technology heightens the ability to detect fraudulent boarding passes while improving customer service and reducing paper use.

"The security benefit is that the bar code cannot be manipulated, and there's an environmental benefit," said TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis. "We were considering the concept, and then Continental approached us. It was a partnership."

The technology works on any cell phone or PDA that can receive and open attachments.

Philadelphia is the 25th airport where Continental offers a paperless boarding option.

Here's how it works:

At the airport, instead of waving a piece of paper, the passenger pulls out his or her phone or mobile device.

The TSA officer still checks a government-issued photo ID, while the passenger places a phone or PDA, displaying the electronic ticket, on a scanner that's about the size of a lunch box.

Then, at the gate, prior to boarding, the passenger scans the boarding pass again at a "gate reader" before getting on the plane.

Who opts to use paperless boarding passes?

In conversations with passengers yesterday at Continental's ticket counter at Philadelphia International Airport, everyone said they liked the idea.

"You save some trees, for one," said Samuel Saavedra, 40, from Houston, a network engineer for Cisco Systems Inc. "And you save some time waiting for the boarding pass to print out. Especially if you travel a lot and you have a carry-on bag, you don't have to wait in line to check in."

Marcy Vaughn, 57, a therapist from Ardmore on her way to Torreon, Mexico, said the appeal was that "I don't have to carry paper. I like to eliminate paper in my life as much as possible."

"I like to keep things in a nonmaterial form," she said. "I think we have too much stuff in the world, so anything that eliminates 'stuff,' I'm happy with."

Tom Ulven, 40, attended a conference in Philadelphia and did not have time to print out his boarding pass. He stopped by the Continental ticket counter, but would have preferred to get the boarding pass electronically.

"For us road warriors, it would definitely be handy," said Ulven, who sells power utility products and lives in Franktown, Colo.

Paperless passes were initially popular with business travelers, but increasingly tech-savvy leisure travelers are using them.

One of the first customers to use a paperless pass in Phoenix last month was a 7-year-old boy who displayed his boarding pass on his iPod, said Jared Miller, Continental's head of customer self-service.

Continental expects that paperless boarding passes will ultimately be available on all Continental flights and that the TSA will roll out the program nationwide.