Fast times

摘要

"We are well on the way to truly paperless travel," so said the then IATA director general, Giovanni Bisignani, in December 2010. Airlines had just completed their conversion to 2D barcoded boarding passes (BCBPs). Bisignani, with one eye on the future, was outlining the next logical step - putting the barcode on a mobile device. Fast forward to today and airlines have enthusiastically embraced mobile boarding passes, with the majority offering the option, according to SITA's 2013 Airline ITTrends Survey. But it has not been all clear skies, and privately some airports are expressing doubts about how effective mobile BCBPs are for high-speed processing of passengers through the airport.