Thursday, May 17, 2007

British Airways To Offer Mobile Barcode Ticketing

From IT Week BA to pilot tickets on mobiles

British Airways (BA) could be the first UK airline to allow passengers to check in and board flights using a barcode (2d code) transmitted as a text message to a mobile phone.

They are looking at sending a barcode to a passenger’s mobile phone using SMS, as well as enabling passengers to log into ba.com via a mobile and then have the barcode sent direct from the web site.

BA is not the only airline interested in the potential of mobile ticketing – carriers in Japan, China and Sweden are already running trials of the technology, but a clear business case has yet to be established.

The technology is not quite there yet," said an Iata spokesman. "We need a global standard for barcodes on mobile phones to be developed, as well as standardised scanners and infrastructure at all airports," he said.

2 comments:

mHegen said...

Hi,

How is it possible to send a 2D-Barcode as SMS??? Isn`t a 2D-Barcode some kind of picture and needs to be send as MMS?

Greetings
Marvin
http://mobile-tagging.blogspot.com

Jos. said...

This is not new at all. ANA offer this possibility in Japan since 2005, I've used it a couple of times at Narita Airport. Japanese mobile phone users can receive a QR code on their phone and check in by having their phone's screen scanned at the airport; foreigners can receive the same code by email, print it out and then have it scanned

Rgds,
Jos. Birken