Airlines May Offer Check-In by Cell Phone

Long airport check-in lines could be a thing of the past when a service being made available next year lets travelers check in for flights by using their cell phones.

Air industry organization SITA and Siemens Business Services announced that they will team to offer air travelers check-in services that would let people use their cell phones to select seats, pick up their boarding pass, and check in with their airline--without being at the airport. The SITA Mobile Check-in services are expected to become commercially available by mid-2005, says Jeff Plumley, senior marketing manager for SITA Information Networking Computing (INC) in North America.

"We are in discussions now with many American-based airlines to get the service through beta tests," Plumley says. So far, Latin American airline TAM has signed on to offer the service to its customers.

Mobile Technology

Siemens Business Service teamed with SITA INC to provide the mobile technology, which includes Java, bar codes, and GPRS. General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a new service that allows information to be sent and received across a mobile telephone network. For example, the GPRS system would send an airline's seating chart for a specific flight to a mobile phone and then transmit the traveler's choice back to the airline's system.

SITA Mobile Check-in will require travelers to use a Java-enabled mobile phone and register for the service through the airline's Web site. Following the registration process, the airline's Web site will then transmit an alert to the air traveler's mobile phone, asking if he or she is ready to check into the flight. The alert will depend on the individual's preferences. For example, the service could alert based on time, say, three hours before a flight, or it could alert travelers based on their proximity to the airport.

Once the traveler checks in, the service will send a two-dimensional bar code to their cell phone, which can be scanned at a kiosk to print out the boarding pass. SITA envisions the bar code actually serving as the boarding pass in some cases.

"It would depend on the security policies at the airport, but we can see broader uses for this type of service," Plumley says. "It can lessen the hassle for travelers, reduce lines for the airports and help airlines offer more services."

The service would be priced for airlines on a per-passenger basis, meaning they pay for it as customers use it, which would eliminate the need for them to pay upfront costs to offer the alternative check-in to customers.