Northwest Revolutionise Boarding Passes

UK Technology revolutionises air travel with the launch of mobile boarding passes for Northwest Airlines.

UK-based technology company and world leaders in mobile boarding pass solutions, Mobiqa, and Northwest Airlines announced today the launch of the paperless boarding pass which will allow customers to use their mobile phones and other handheld devices for boarding purposes.

Northwest, one of the world’s largest airlines, serve more than 1,000 cities in over 160 countries around the world. In partnership with Mobiqa, they now offer mobile phone boarding passes, called E-Boarding Pass, to customers travelling on non-stop flights from Indianapolis to cities within the U.S. when checking in at nwa.com using a PC or a handheld mobile device. The E-Boarding Pass incorporates passenger travel details on an industry standard barcode that is sent directly to hundreds of handheld devices and mobile phones in the form of an MMS, email or WAP Push/link message.

Passengers choosing E-Boarding Pass no longer require a printer at home or a kiosk to print their boarding pass. They can receive it on the move, to their phone, and proceed directly to airport security checkpoints where their phone is scanned to allow entry into the departure area.

“In 2007, Northwest Airlines began allowing customers to use their handheld devices to check-in for a flight. Now they can take that one step further by eliminating the need for a paper boarding pass,” said Al Lenza, Vice President Distribution and E-Commerce.

The new E-Boarding Pass also helps Northwest Airline in its efforts to eliminate unnecessary paper waste and continue its conservation efforts. It is estimated Northwest Airlines eliminates 20 million tickets a year by going paperless for ticketing (E-ticket). This new feature now expands the paperless concept to boarding passes.

To provide this mobile boarding pass solution, Northwest is partnering with Edinburgh-based Mobiqa, a world leader in mobile barcode technology, who are able to deliver a two-dimensional mobile barcode to a wide variety of mobile devices, providing more customers with access to the benefits of the mobile boarding pass product. Unlike the traditional one-dimensional barcode customers are accustomed to seeing, the 2D mobile barcode allows a much larger volume of travel data to be embedded in an industry standard barcode. This data is scanned by Northwest devices to provide boarding pass authentication at security checkpoints and boarding validation at the gate. Northwest, in co-operation with the Transportation security Administration, plans to expand the E-Boarding Pass option to additional cities upon successful completion of the test.

Nick Rankin, CEO, Mobiqa Ltd comments, “Offering one of the world’s largest airlines the ability to provide paperless boarding passes to their passengers is an important evolution in airline boarding logistics. With today’s mobile generation, we strongly feel that Northwest Airline’s mobile E-Boarding Pass offering will make for a more convenient, environmentally friendly means of checking-in and boarding a flight. We are delighted to be working with Northwest on this significant mobile boarding pass initiative and are confident that their passengers will make full use of this innovative new service.”

23 May 2008