Traveling with American Airlines' New Mobile Boarding Pass by Gavin Lew of User Centric, Inc (USA)

On November 13, 2008, American Airlines started offering mobile boarding passes for select flights departing from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. These mobile passes are equivalent to the paper boarding passes you can generate at check-in kiosks or on your home printer but are displayed on the screen on your mobile device or PDA. Instead of handing your paper pass to TSA guards at airport security and then to the gate agent, you show them the barcode on your device's screen.

As a heavy mobile user and frequent traveler, this option initially sounded like it would be ideal for me so I tried the mobile boarding pass within days of its initial launch. This article documents my experience. Overall, the process had its ups and downs. Notably, I needed to use more mobile features than I expected and I suspect technical improvements are probably needed to ensure that mobile passes consistently work with all scanners.

The Boarding Pass: I've got mail?

The online check-in process began as normal - I logged onto the AA.com site and selected the flight check-in process. Once I selected my reservation, three options were shown:

1. Print
2. Email for Print
3. Email for use on Cell Phone or other Mobile Device

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