British Airways get into mobile ticketing

By on May 17, 2007 in News

Link: Mobile Business Magazine – BA Pilot Mobile Tickets

British Airways are looking to be amongst the first airlines to check passengers on board flights using text message barcodes on mobile phones.

‘We are looking at sending a barcode to a passenger’s mobile phone using SMS, as well as enabling them to log into ba.com via a mobile and then have the barcode sent direct from the web site,’ said Mike Cavanagh, BA product boss.

The final decision on the trial will be made in a few months, following an investigation into the pros and cons. ‘Mobile technology must be good for both the airline and its passengers if it is to go ahead’, said Cavanagh.

Interesting news. My biggest fear with travelling is losing the return part of the ticket. Wonder if there’ll be a feature to request a resend of the barcode just in case you accidently delete it from your inbox?

About Alex

View all posts by Alex →

  • http://www.shopqwik.co.uk Mark

    This is a really cool feature… We looked at this two years ago and helped an airline to get it to work on a number of different sized screens but at the time the CAA wouldn’t allow its use…

    One of the problems is that you need to have a standard that all airlines accept or have a way of printing a boarding pass based on the bar code. Different types of bar code need different scanning readers so you could end up with 10 readers at the security point and a queue the length of the airport. If that issue could be resolved you then need to have a fall back position just in case the persons bar code cannot be scanned for any reason.

    You also may need to receive the text for the return part of your journey while abroad as usually you can only check in on or near the day of departure (CAA rules I think…?).

    We are introducing the new PNR ticket number option to ShopQwik which gives the passenger a number which can be typed into a kiosk near the time of flying and have the boarding pass printed. Its been working in the states for ages and now will be a global standard from 1st of jan 08.

    I think it would be really cool if this trial works out because anything that speeds up air travel is a good thing.

    Mark

  • http://dlethe01.quebecblogue.com/ dlethe01

    Paul Coby is chairman of airline industry IT body SITA and CIO of British Airways.
    We also know that Gavitec has designed and implemented a full solution mobile ticketing, mobile check in (biometric fingerprint) service in collaboration with Siemens Business Services and SITA.

    Company presentation (July 2006) – Page 30 (PDF File)
    http://www.gavitec.com/fileadmin/template/main/downloads/MD_CorporatePresentation_F0607.pdf

    IATA knows the value of Gavitec/Neomedia (Gavitec is a subsidiary of Neomedia).
    “Gavitec, a specialist in designing and manufacturing flexible 2D code readers for mobile technology has become an IATA Strategic Partner for 2D bar code.”
    http://www.iata.org/html_email/3954300-stb-newsletter/stb_enewsletter_March07.htm
    http://www.iata.org/sp/PartnerDetail?partner=1712

    Neomedia/Gavitec is part of the MC2
    http://www.mobilecodes.org/

Switch to our mobile site