Continental Airlines introduces paperless boarding passes on flights from United States to London’s Heathrow Airport

Continental Airlines, headquartered in Houston, Texas, the United States, has introduced its system of mobile, paperless boarding pass for flights to Heathrow Airport in London – thus becoming the first airline carrier to offer the paperless boarding pass service on flights between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The airline had launched the paperless boarding pass system on trans-Atlantic flights from Frankfurt International Airport, in Germany, in December 2009.

A mobile boarding pass displays a 2-dimensional bar-code, along with passenger information and flight information, which cannot be duplicated or manipulated.

Apart from the mobile boarding passes, Continental Airlines will send flight information to the mobile-phone devices of the passengers to enable them to track their flights as well as in-flight amenities.

Continental Airlines currently operates 5 flights a day from the United States to London’s Heathrow Airport – with 3 of the flights from New York, and the rest 2 flights from Houston.

Earlier, the carrier had had announced that it will offer the latest, flat-bed seats in BusinessFirst for all its flights to Heathrow Airport from June 2, 2010.

Continental Airlines said in a statement that, with the introduction of the boarding passes, the passengers do not require paper-printed tickets and boarding cards. Instead, the passengers can show their personal digital assistant (PDA) or mobile phone to security officials and check-in officials. These passes can easily be read by scanners installed at the boarding gates and checkpoints.

Martin Hand, vice-president (reservations and e-commerce) of Continental Airlines, said in the statement that the airline will continue to expand the “self-service technology” to more of its domestic as well as international destinations.

Though paperless boarding passes, or mobile boarding passes, are regularly used for internal flights in the United States, they are not used widely on international flights because of requirements and rules related to security and technology.

More and more carriers, like Air Canada and American Airlines, for example, have released apps which feature the mobile boarding passes technology. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is pushing for adoption of paperless boarding passes worldwide.

Continental Airlines said in the statement that it was the was the first carrier to have offered the paperless boarding passes system in the United States, in a pilot programme with the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA), starting from December 2007.

At present, Continental Airlines offers the mobile boarding pass service at 42 airports, which include the airline’s hubs in New York, Cleveland, and Houston.