Near-field Communication for Airline Travel

A mobile phone enabled with near-field communication (NFC) can provide a range of services that make an airline traveler’s experience more enjoyable while reducing costs for airline companies and significantly enhancing security.

• Booking: Once the booking is made, either at an airline agent desk or online, the electronic ticket can be downloaded securely to the phone via an NFC reader or over the air, and stored on the phone's chip.
  
  
• Check-in: NFC readers or tags within the airport premises can be used for immediate local check-in, triggering issue of the boarding pass and delivery to the phone over the air while the passenger is en route to the departure gate. Alternatively, travelers can perform a more classic mobile check-in and receive their boarding pass over the air.
  
  
• Security: Unmanned security gates equipped with readers automatically admit passengers with valid boarding passes stored on their phones. In future, this step could be enriched with a biometric identification of the passengers, as their electronic passport and biometrics credentials could also be stored on the phone’s chip.
  
  
• Boarding: In a similar fashion, unmanned boarding gates equipped with readers automatically admit passengers with valid boarding passes on their phones in the aircraft.

These are only the obvious uses of NFC-enabled mobile phones in the airline industry—others are in development. In general, the use of NFC-enabled mobile phones in the airline industry can:

• Speed up the entire process at the airport, reducing queues and enabling airports to increase airport capacity.
  
  
• Reduce the need for printing boarding passes and reduce associated costs.
  
  
• Enable direct contact with the traveler.