New airport scanner speeds travel time

Some Continental Airlines passengers who fly out of Newark Liberty International Airport can now carry boarding passes on their cell phones, BlackBerries and other personal communication devices.

A new electronic bar code boarding pass, developed by Continental, is being tested at four airports

Representatives of Continental and the Transportation Security Administration demonstrated Wednesday how it works at Newark's Terminal C.

When travelers book a domestic flight on Continental at participating airports, they are now given the option of receiving an encrypted bar code boarding pass via e-mail on their cell phones or PDAs (personal digital assistants). The customer who takes that option can go to the security checkpoint at the airport, if they have no bags to check.

The passenger shows the boarding pass on the cell phone's display screen to a TSA officer, who uses a hand-held scanner to scan the bar code and verify its authenticity.

The boarding pass also includes text, such as the passenger's name, flight number, and departure and arrival times. Travelers still must show a photo ID at the checkpoint, and paper-boarding passes must still be used for connecting flights.

Jared Miller, Continental's director of customer self-service, said feedback is "very positive" so far. Travelers like having the paperless option because they don't have to stop at a kiosk in the terminal or use the printer at home or at the office to get a paper boarding pass, he said.

TSA officials worked closely with Continental in developing the program.

Russell McCaffery, the TSA's deputy security director at Newark, said the new boarding passes add another layer of security as they are less prone to alteration.

"Our concern is that if a passenger has a fraudulent boarding pass we can't check it against the no-fly list," he said. "We hope to see this go to all our airports," he said.

The bar code verification technology may eventually be used on paper-boarding passes as well, he said, though no timeframes have been set.

Most cell phones are capable of receiving the boarding passes as are most PDAs, including BlackBerries, iPhones and Treos.

Continental, the top carrier at Newark, introduced the pilot program in December at George Bush International Airport in Houston. In recent weeks it debuted at Boston's Logan International Airport, Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., and at Newark.

Northwest Airlines recently started a similar test program in Indianapolis.

At Continental's Houston hub, more than 600 passengers a day are using mobile phone boarding passes, Miller said. "Volume is growing as customers get more used to it," he said.

For now, the paperless option is available in the New York area only to those traveling alone on domestic flights from Newark's Terminal C.

Anthony Baccale, a TSA lead officer at Newark, said he and other TSA officers have taken a two-to-three-hour class given by Continental to learn how to check the paperless-boarding passes. Three scanning devices have been installed at each of Terminal C's three checkpoints, he said.

So far, maybe three or four passengers present paperless boarding passes during the daily 6:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. rush of departures, he said. But he expects the numbers will grow as word gets around, he said.