Air France trials boarding passes on mobiles

International airline Air France has announced its intention to test the use of mobile phone boarding passes for European flights.

The new boarding pass initiative is initially being trialled on daily flights between Paris and Amsterdam.

Air France has described their experiment as "a world première for international round-trip flights".

The scheme works by sending an electronic barcode or boarding pass to the passenger’s mobile phone after the passenger has registered with Air France and purchased their ticket.

The received image contains all the same information displayed on a traditional paper boarding pass, including seat number and boarding time, and is scanned and checked in the usual way, first at the boarding gate and then by stewards on the plane.

Passport identification is the only paper documentation that passengers taking part in the scheme need.

Vice-president of marketing for Air France Patrick Roux described the service as the aviation industry's "next major technological innovation after e-ticketing".

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