Mobile Boarding Passes Still Have a Way To Go – But is Apple’s iTravel The Solution?

Coming back from Atlanta last week, I decided to give mobile boarding passes a try. In theory, those have been standardized by IATA a couple of years ago and deployments are aplenty. Is it not time for me to ditch that redundant piece of paper? Of course, there was also a measure of professional curiosity in there. And boy was that timely – with the recent reports of Apple’s iTravel patent.

Getting the mobile boarding pass was easy enough – check the box on Delta’s website and you’re done. As I was doing ATL-SFO I pretty much expected everything to work on the airport side (more about this later). No sooner do I click “Submit” and an email lends in my inbox – a simple two-liner email with a link to my friends’ mobiqa.com website.  Click the link and hey presto – a short form with some flight info and a 2D barcode. So far so good.

22 hrs later I am at the airport. Medium-length line at security. The middle-aged TSA agent is a little surprised but otherwise unfazed by my toting my BlackBerry as my boarding pass. No problem sir, let’s see the boarding pass.

Oops. You see, I’m the kind of guy who gets around 100 emails a day. So it’s pretty far back in the mailbox behind the last day’s correspondence. No problem, we’ll just search for “Delta”. 10-15 clicks later I have 3 emails from Delta and am able to single out the right one. Bingo.

Problem #1: Fishing a boarding pass sent 24 hours earlier from your inbox is, shall we say, not good user experience.

No sooner do I open this and the TSA agent pulls me back. You see, a barcode needs a reader, and yes he has one – or that is, all the TSA agents at the terminal have one – just one. So he takes me out of the line to the barcode, wiggles the phone around a bit – and gets the info. Quick comparison to my driver’s license and I’m in.

Problem #2: Scanners are being deployed – but it’ll take awhile.

So far – OK. 30 minutes later I’m at the gate, and they begin boarding. This time I’m smart. I actually search for that boarding pass email ahead of time. But oops. Do I have data coverage? Cause if I don’t, that email with the link is not going to help me any this time. A few lost heartbeats later, Verizon comes through for me. Got the barcode. Phew.

Problem #3: A system based on browsing to get the content is bound to fail at airports some of the time.

I present the attendant at the gate my BlackBerry. She wiggles it left. Wiggles it right. Wiggles it up, down and sideways. Sorry, the reader can’t recognize the barcode. “You see, sir, it’s too small”.

Time for a confession: entering the terminal, I went up to kiosk. I was meaning to check whether I could get an upgrade (a topic for another post, I guess), but somehow it made me print a boarding pass…  I actually forgot about, but after a few seconds of the attendant and me gazing at each other apologetically with 20 people standing in line behind me, I produced the paper pass and was shuffled onto the plane. Paper one, technology 0.

Problem #2A: Even when the scanners are there – there’s still training and optimizing to do.

… I was mulling over this experience for a few days (and frankly was too busy to write about it), until last Wednesday patentwatcher.com comes out with a story about Apple’s latest move – iTravel. At face value – Apple basically trying to patent a whole suite of services that looks suspiciously familiar (well the diagrams aren’t as pretty as WorldMate’s UI design, but still the idea is clear) – but the real point is this is actually a Near Field Communication (NFC) based boarding pass. And the industry is abuzz. Mobile people are impassioned with Apple’s latest innovative move – attempting to revolutionize another industry. That’s unless of course they are aligned with Apple’s competitors. Travel distribution people are aghast. They have read about how Apple took the music market from the labels, the mobile content market from the wireless operators, and is now after Amazon’s dominance in eBooks. Is it going to eat their lunch too?

For now, I will put aside the strategic implications of a mobile leader getting involved in travel services. What I think about it is clear – why else would I’ve founded WorldMate and pulled it to where it is (and don’t let anyone fool you – founding and managing a start-up for 10 years is one of the hardest things you can do … regardless of how successful you are). Let’s focus back on the boarding pass question.

Given 1 and 3 above – it is clear that using email or SMS + mobile web as the storage and presentation mechanism is bound to create experience issues. The bottom line is that people need their travel info stored on their mobile devices, and a sure-fire way of being able to pull it up at the right time. Apple is dead-on with this concept. My travel information and documents need to be available to me 100% of the time when I’m traveling, and be presented automatically when I need them.

With regards to the use of NFC, allow me to be a little more skeptical. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the concept. It’s right on. Much better than an optical scanner that requires you to hold the device screen to it just-so. The fact that IATA and its members chose barcodes over it demonstrates how little they understand other, fast moving industries. Yes, all phones have screens that can show barcodes now – but given a compelling use case, all phones will have NFC chips in less than 5 years. Just like color screens. Or Bluetooth. Or cameras. But how long will it take IATA members to deploy infrastructure?

Once the decision to use barcode scanners was made, it’s a 5-10 year process executed by hundreds of airports and airlines. Changing course mid-way is almost impossible. Doing that for a proprietary solution like Apple’s, and one that it also wants to protect the IP for, is plain stupid. Is it a good idea for Apple to patent this? Sure, if it can. Add it to the portfolio. Is this going to be accepted as the industry standard? Unlikely. Not unless Apple acquires SITA… and I don’t think the airlines holding it are particularly in a rush to sell...

Bottom line – a better mobile boarding pass user experience is necessary if the airlines and airports are serious about it. And they should be. 

And Apple’s iTravel? It is definitely the wave of the future. It’s a trend that will change the travel industry and increase the market share and revenue of the mobile players who will implement it well and do it first. Whether it’s Apple or someone else – that remains to be seen.

 

 

Comments

[Joe Buhler]

Excellente post. As with almost all new technology introduced in the travel industry the problems start on the ground with the implementation in the "old" physical or legacy world and the when it doesn't work as expected the uninformed media and public blame the technology rather than then other way around, blame the legacy world. This boarding pass issue is just one case in point where legacy drags down the implementation of what would be a better solution for everyone concerned, even the ever paranoid security institutions. In the meantime, we keep waving limp papers at people with or without the necessary scanners and keep our top technology devices in the plastic tray to be x-rayed. Pitiful, really.

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