Here's Your Boarding Pass

Continental debuts procedure Thursday at Lindbergh Field

Passengers using Lindbergh Field will soon be using their cell phones as boarding passes.

The Transportation Security Administration and Continental Airlines demonstrated a paperless boarding pass on Thursday.

Here's how it works: A bar code is sent to a user's smart phone and then is scanned into a machine. The traveler then shows a form of ID to confirm their identity and they're ready to board.

"This is really about customer convenience," said Jared Miller of Continental Airlines. "This is about putting power in the customer's hands so they don't have to stand in a line to use a kiosk. They don't have to go find a printer or a fax machine to obtain their boarding pass. Most customers are walking around with one of those smart phones. Let's enable them to use it for more features and now it can serve as a boarding pass."
    
Officials said the scanner works on most phones.

Passengers who don't have a cell phone will have to print a paper pass.

The plan was tried out earlier this summer at O'Hare International Airport, in Chicago.

In other air-travel news, transportation officials announced this week that passengers purchasing tickets will now need to provide a date of birth and list their gender. The moves are being put in place in Aug. 15; it's hoped that they will offer greater security and reduce situations in which passengers with the same names as terrorists are mistakenly barred or delayed from taking flights.

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