There’s good reason that many of us New Yorkers think that we could never live anywhere else. Many of us believe that we’re often “out in front” on the cutting edge. That means the latest fashions, the newest gadgets, the best shows… and the list goes on.
With this in mind, many of us will be excited to hear about Delta’s latest and greatest in electronic check-in. And, guess where we’re testing it? Hint: not at Delta’s world headquarters in Atlanta, but, instead… you guessed it! New York City. (Click the image for a larger iPhone example of our LGA test)
Just last week, Delta Air Lines, in partnership with the Federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA), began testing paperless mobile check-in for customers traveling from New York-LaGuardia (LGA) to any U. S. destination. What this means is that you have the option of bypassing the lobby by using their PDA and other Web-enabled device to check in for domestic travel from LGA to any U. S. airport. How great does this sound? You can use your electronic boarding pass, displayed on your mobile device – no paper! – to proceed to the security checkpoint, and then straight to the gate to board your flight.
I’ve mentioned before how Delta is focused on respecting, enhancing, and saving your time wherever we can throughout the travel experience. This means from booking your ticket all the way through picking up your bag at your final destination. Paperless mobile check-in is one more way that we’re “putting our money where our mouth is,” so to speak. It’s no secret that checking in online from the comfort of home or office has become quite popular. But this latest advancement means that, at LaGuardia, when traveling to a U. S. destination, it’s even easier than that. Imagine checking in for your flight, for example, when in your taxi or car to the airport; or, when you’re walking from the parking lot to the Delta terminal. Go right through the doors to the TSA security line – mobile device in hand – and you’re on your way. It works if you’re checking bags, too. Just head for the Delta bag drop location prior to security screening.
Now, the check-in process can take place from anywhere, at any time withing 24 hours of flight departure. At the same time, think “green.” You’ll be helping environmental sustainability by reducing paper and ink usage. No matter how you look at it, we believe that this is a winner!
After the test is successfully completed in LaGuardia, we hope to leverage paperless check-in across our domestic system, to and from any U. S. airport.
If you’re heading out of LaGuardia on Delta, first of all, thank you. Secondly, experience our newest check-in technology by giving paperless mobile check-in a try. And let us know how what you think. We’re listening.
As always, thank you for choosing Delta. We appreciate your business.
Brian T. Rutter
Director – Sales & Marketing
New York
Delta Air Lines, Inc.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Does this work if you have a screen protector on your screen?
June 24th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Thanks for your question, gonepetetong. The answer is, “it depends.” Different screen protectors are, well, different. Please give it a try on your next departure from LGA. Thanks for your support of Delta.
Brian
June 24th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I don’t get it – so when you get through security and get to the get, do you need to obtain a paper boarding pass from the gate agent? If not, how do you board the flight. I am thinking this would hold up the boarding process because the agent collecting tickets at the boarding door would have to stop and read the device. Give us more details how this works once you get through security.
Thanks!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Tommy Zee, thanks for your question.
Once you pass through security you may board your flight by showing your device to your gate agent. He or she will scan your mobile device just as a paper boarding pass. No need to read it or to print out a paper pass. Hope this helps!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am
[...] rolling it out last year, and lately both Continental and Delta have put out tests of their own. Delta just put out a blog post on their test as well. It sounds great in theory, but you might want to think twice about it if [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Ok, I have a blackberry 8288 world phone. Do I need to do anything special to my phone? Like Load new software? Also, I’ve heard comments from CO flyers that say the Java you have load slows the blackberry down.
Finally, where can we see the results of the testing and what DL’s rollout plans would be?
Thanks!
Nick
June 25th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I really want to try this. I think it’s a great idea and it should catch on in a couple of years. More and more people use cell phones nowadays and internet services are either not that expensive or included in cell phone plans so everything should be fine.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:22 am
NickBjr, thank you for the additional questions. You shouldn’t have to install any new software. You’ll simply use the browser on your mobile device to check in.
We are optimistic about this new capability; however, we won’t know the full implementation plan until we have the opportunity to measure and understand our success at LaGuardia. For now, please try it at LGA, and stay tuned! Thanks for your support.
Brian
July 24th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’d like to know if this test is still going on. I will be flying in to out LGA alot over the next 6 – 7 months and this would be great. I tried it last week and the TSA person didn’t know anything about mobile check-in.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
This is cool ! Also… I was please to discover Delta was ready with a custom icon for my iPhone when saved Delta.com onto the Home screen!
October 26th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
when will this be rolled out to the shuttle terminal at la guardia?
Or for that matter other airports?
October 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
This works great. I actually used it this morning in Seattle SEATAC to scan as my boarding pass at the gate. The counter agents hadn’t seen it yet so it was a bit of an experiment for all of us but it worked! It even properly processed my first class upgrade on the scanner. I guess everywhere except in Laguardia you still have to have a paper boarding pass to get by TSA but once you’re at the gate give it a try to see if it works! Can’t wait till we get this in Atlanta. By the way I use a T-Mobile Blackberry Curve with the standard Blackberry browser.
J.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
NWA, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, is also doing this at DTW!
November 24th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[...] Delta is also offering mobile boarding passes in LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Turns out it started back in June… Who [...]
November 29th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I think this is a great idea for those who know how to use their device, I am a little worried about the people who only know how to use email and the phone.
My only recommendation is to educate TSA about the option. I remember Delta being the first to roll out “print at home” tickets and unfortunately it took TSA in ATL and ORD a couple weeks before they understood it forcing people to go back to the counter and get a “real” ticket.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
My wife and I are travelling together, may I check BOTH of us in on the same IPhone or do we need separate devices?
January 9th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Well I just tried this at LaGuardia and the TSA agent and his supervisor both thought I was an idiot, or crazy (or both). I told them Delta was testing paperless mobile check-in at LGA and they both said it was the first they heard of it. So obviously not everyone has been “trained” yet.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
So I should not try the mobile check-in while at LGA and MSP, because it’s still only in the testing stage there?
I assume it works fine at the other airports? I’m looking forward to trying it out at San Francisco tomorrow!
Mike
January 26th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Air Canada does this and it works great. It saved me from missing a flight from Montreal to Toronto last year. Please bring it to Atlanta soon!!
February 6th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Brian-Please update us on how this is going over the coarse of the test. Also, do you have a timeline that you can share for other airport rollouts?
May 21st, 2009 at 11:09 am
PLEASE advise ias soon as possible f the electronic boarding passes are still in a testing mode. If not, PLEASE advise what cities they are allowed. Thanks!
May 25th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
In the past you have said that MCO (Orlando) will soon be brought on-line for this facility. How soon is soon please? And when you do, will CLEAR participate as well?
May 26th, 2009 at 7:58 am
This is a cool idea, but until it is officially released I will stick to the printed tickets. I don’t want to be the one to confuse the hell out of security, Lord knows they’ll have no idea what to do if you show them your cell phone when they ask for your boarding pass.
June 8th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
[...] mobile boarding at several airports including Houston, Newark, and New York’s LaGuardia airport. Delta passengers can use electronic boarding passes at LaGuardia in New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul. [...]
June 8th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Cool idea, problem is displaying the e-boarding pass OFFLINE.
The Delta mobile site does a fine job of finding your reservation and getting you checked in and even displaying the e-boarding pass. BUT
since this is a secure connection it times out after a while. So if you check in using your iPhone while you’re in the cab, by the time you get to the security area or the gate the page has long since timed out! The result is you have to go through the whole process again to display the boarding pass.
We need some way of saving the image of the boarding pass.
Several alternative browsers for iPhone are out there that will save a page, however they either
1. just save the html code and so the barcode is not kept in the device (requiring it to go online and get it (from a timed out page)…
OR
2. they make a second request from the server as they save the page, however the Delta Mobile web site does not allow a reload of the page from the mobile device and you end up with an error message!
The only easy solution I’ve found is to do the check-in on mobile.delta.com on my MAC and then print the mobile formated e-boarding pass to a PDF that I can then e-mail to myself for later retrieval and viewing on my iPhone.
It remains to be seen if the scanners at the Gate will be able to read this.. stand by for tonight’s update. I’ll be trying it at LAS.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
The e-boarding pass seems to be a great idea, but it has its drawbacks for travel on official (i.e. corporate or government) business: at least at my institution I need to submit the paper boarding passes for reimbursement purposes (e-ticket is not sufficient b/c it does not prove that I really took the flight). So how does this work in the brave new world of paperless travel?
June 10th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
It works with a screen protector. Here is the issue that I had. I pulled up my mobile boarding pass and presented it to the TSA at SLC. That all went fine. I gate it to the boarding agent, they scanned it i got on the plane. When I went to pull it back up for my connection in Minneapolis/St Paul the page automatically refreshed on my iPhone and i could not re-open it! They need to do something to make it not reload on the iphone, be able to recall it anytime during the travel time, or send the boarding pass via email so it is stored on the phone.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:40 am
garysenter… Didn’t I essentially say that?
On regular web pages, if you just press and hold on an immage, iPhone will offer to save that image on the iPhone. When I used the system, that’s all the machine needed to see. I havn’t tried to do this yet, but I bet it will work!
As for my approach the other evening, e-mailing myself a PDF image of the whole boarding pass DID work at LAS, however the gate didn’t have the scanners yet, so they had to manually log me onto the plane.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
wnpeugh: saving the bar code image will help getting on the plane, but for people who have to go out of the security area to smoke during a layover, they need to have the full page with name and date of flight to get back through security. Delta needs to allow you to pull up your boarding pass ANYTIME after you check in. What is the difference it isnt like your paper boarding pass self destructs after your last flight lands, why cant I just go back to Delta’s site and open it back up at ANY time after i check in?
June 11th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
garysenter:
I agreee with you, ultimately the thing to do is have them e-mail it to you so you can easily pull it up with an email client or save it so as not to have to go back into their site (a mult-step process) just to pull it up again.
SO.. our request to Brian Rutter and his techies is to arrange this kind of simplified implementation!
Brian, if you are reading these comments.. PLEASE?
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Yeah but has anyone solved the ‘how to save the boarding pass outside the mobile browser problem’ yet?
June 25th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
With iPhone 3.0 you can copy the whole page (boarding pass) and paste it in a new email. When doing that I had to remove the links at the bottom of the page and the word “Check In” under the Delta logo. Then I was able to save it as a draft in my email and bring it back up. As for the comment about saving the bar code to the camera roll that does not work because it enlarges the barcode to fit the screen which distorts the image.
July 27th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
On any iPhone (OS 3.0 or not) you can take a screen shot by holding down the home button and the lock button (on top of iPhone). The screen will briefly go white, and then a still picture of the screen will be in your camera roll (available for future reference/display without a network connection).
Separate Questions: If there are two users traveling on the same itinerary, can they check in together on one phone, or should they check in separately on their own phones? If checking bags, is the Mobile Check-In system able to process the payments via the SmartPhone for bag check (to avoid the $5 in-person charge)?
August 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Replying to sabass who posted:
“The e-boarding pass seems to be a great idea, but it has its drawbacks for travel on official (i.e. corporate or government) business: at least at my institution I need to submit the paper boarding passes for reimbursement purposes (e-ticket is not sufficient b/c it does not prove that I really took the flight). So how does this work in the brave new world of paperless travel?”
Until Delta perfects this you can always ask the agent at the gate to print a paper boarding pass… however I agree it would work so much better if there was a button on the web site that would allow users to click it and miraculously have a pdf of the ticket sent out our email address. Then we could pull it up after getting through security.
I used this is ATL on 24 Jun 09 and it worked really well at security but I had to resign in again. Once at the gate with I tried to resign in onto the Delta web site it was having “technical difficulties” and I could not access the boarding pass again. The agent at the gate just printed a paper one for me however I had to stand in line.
I still think it is a cool tool and a step in the right direction. Delta just needs to work the bugs out.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:59 am
TSA usually makes me hold my boarding pass mug-shot style while passing through the metal detector. Obviously I can’t go through holding my iphone. How does the paperless boarding pass plan take this into account?
August 12th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I used the electronic boarding pass at SLC last week. The delta counter I went to didn’t have the scanner so they had to print out a boarding pass for me. I used it at the security screening and TSA people were excited to use it. However when I got to my gate I was unable to pull up my electronic ticket and my boarding pass indicated that I was chosen for the random additional Security Screening. Since I had no way to prove that I had been through security I was asked to step aside while TSA came and proceded to pat me down and search my bag. I really wish there was a way to save the E-ticket.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Hi BenN:
That is terrible that you had to be “patted down” – ugh.
I use a BlackBerry and had this exact same problem in the Atlanta airport however I just noticed that if have the eticket open on the bb if I click my bb button to the left and click “save” it sends a copy of the site to my email. I have not yet tried this to see if it works but will be in ATL 26 Aug 09 and will try it then. I will post an update.
Safe travels.
August 13th, 2009 at 7:24 am
There is a cool feature on the iPhone that allows you to take a screen shot of the ticket and saves it in your camera roll pictures. This way you only need to login to Delta once, then just show the image of the boarding pass when needed.
To take a screenshot: While holding down the “Home” button, press the power button once to take the picture.
August 16th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Will this be available at LAS (Las Vegas Mcarran) anytime soon?
February 19th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
For those that are computer challenged, when checking in my boss the last time on delta.com there is not an option for faxing boarding passes. We were used to that option on the nwa.com website for checking in. My boss is from an older generation and does not have a computer. So we faxed him his boarding passes to where ever he was traveling. Is this an option that can be added during the check in process? Thanks.
February 19th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Dear dfb:
try checking in your boss there is a new function that allows you to print the ticket and/or click a box to send it to a mobile device/phone. If your boss has a smart phone he just needs to click on the link that is sent to him which will bring up his ticket on his phone. Then all he has to do is save it to his home page if he has an iPhone which allows him to pull up the ticket right on his iPhone without accessing the link again. If he has a blackberry he has to click on the link which will bring up the ticket on his phone then he just has to click the left blackberry button (left of the track ball) and scroll down to “save page” , click it and viola it will send the ticket to his email. Then he can access the ticket without having to open the link. TSA agents have a scanner to actually scan the ticket thY is now on his phone.
Come on times the are a changing and he needs to get with the program. It really is not that hard. I use this all the time now in ATL and now know one of the TSA agents at the South Termal security by name now be ause she knows I only use the paperless ticket now.;)
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Having used the previous NWA mobile check-in, it was very easy to access, but the scanners installed by TSA in Memphis and Atlanta had difficult reading the barcode from my iPhone (*no screen protector*)
March 15th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
This works very well on my blackberry pearl. My question is, when I get to the security line, I show my ID and then scan my blackberry. But when I have to go through the magnetron, I usually have to flash my boarding pass, but since I have my boarding pass on my blackberry, I have to put that through the xray machine, sort of defeating the purpose. Luckily I had a print out also.
Do you need to show the boarding pass to go through the magnetron?
March 15th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Hi. I believe TSA no longer requires you to show your boarding pass at the magnetometer. The agents check ID and boarding pass before the x-ray lines. You will, however, need to show the e-boarding pass again when you arrive at the gate for boarding.
April 25th, 2010 at 1:57 am
I have an i-phone and have not been able to even log on to the site to down load the boarding pass. I do not know what I am doing wrong. Anyone with any advice? Is there a setting that I have wrong. When I try to go to mobile.delta.com, I get a window that states “cannot open page Safari cannot open the page because the server cannot be found.” help!
July 19th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I love this feature! My home airport (RSW) has a scanner at the security desk but electronic boarding passes aren’t available there. PLEASE ADD RSW SOON!
September 24th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Particularly useful, is that the screen image will also show whether or not SkyPriority applies – so you can check in online and head right to the priority TSA lineup by flashing your PDA. No need to show your skymiles card. Can’t wait for this to hit JFK.
October 5th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Living in NYC, I have used this feature many times and find it a great benefit. However on my most recent shuttle trip to DCA I do not recall being offered the option for mobile/e-boarding pass and had to print paper. Did I miss something during my on-line check in process, or has the program been suspended? Thanks.
October 21st, 2010 at 4:18 am
Glad Delta got the iPhone bugs worked out on the Fly Delta app as it has been working for several weeks very well.
Tried this twice on iPhone and had no problem in ATL, trying this today in LIT. Will try nest week in IAD.
October 31st, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Mine (Droid-X) worked fine at Boston and Atlanta but my buddies didn’t. They thought it was because the image was too small. His Sky Priority border at the top of the image shrinks the image slightly and just enough that it didn’t scan at the kiosk or gate. At least that’s the only explaination Delta could come up with.
November 5th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
This is a great feature. Please add STL to your list of airports for eTicket boarding. STL has scanners in place at the Delta terminal and currently, other airlines in STL are using this technology.
December 9th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
How can this be safe? I was thinking–what if I downloaded my boarding pass into my phone and gave it to a friend with a different name? When she checks in with her ID, how does the TSA person know that it’s not my friend’s phone and she’s just using it to check in under a different name even though it’s my phone?
December 15th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
@Missy – beacuse the QR barcode that displays on your phone contains all the information that would appear on a printed BP. So if your friend uses your phone at TSA, the barcode info will not match her ID
February 14th, 2011 at 7:59 am
When do you think you’ll add RIC or PHF?