Boarding pass

BCBP was part of the IATA Simplifying the Business program, which issued an industry mandate for all boarding passes to be barcoded.

In 2020, a photograph of a boarding pass posted by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Instagram provided sufficient information to log in to Qantas's website.

While not in and of itself problematic as the flight had happened in the past, the website (through its source code) unintentionally leaked private data not intended to be displayed directly, such as Abbott's passport number and Qantas's internal PNR remarks.

[citation needed] Electronic boarding passes were 'the industry's next major technological innovation after e-ticketing'.

[6] According to SITA's Airline IT Trend Survey 2009,[7] mobile BCBP accounted for 2.1% of use (vs. paper boarding passes), forecast rising to 11.6% in 2012.

This way the passenger does not need to open the airline's dedicated app and shortly before the flight, the boarding pass appears on their device's home screen.

The United Nations International Telecommunication Union expected mobile phone subscribers to hit the 4 billion mark by the end of 2008.

[15] In the US, the Transportation Security Administration runs a pilot program of a Boarding Pass Scanning System, using the IATA BCBP standard.

British Airways CitiExpress, the first to pioneer this self-service initiative, piloted it on its London City Airport routes to minimize queues at check-in desks, in 1999.

However, the advent of low-cost carriers that charged for not using print-at-home boarding passes was the catalyst to shift consumers away from traditional at-airport check-in functions.

This paved the way for British Airways to become the first global airline to deploy self-service boarding passes using this now ubiquitous technology.

[33] Many airlines encourage travellers to check in online up to a month before their flight and obtain their boarding pass before arriving at the airport.

[41] Print-at-home boarding passes display adverts chosen specifically for given travellers based on their anonymised passenger information, which does not contain any personally identifiable data.

Modern boarding pass for Air Canada . A variety of information relevant to the flight is printed on the pass, including the departure and arrival airports, the passenger's travel class , the flight number and the departure time.
An older, non-computerized Air Transat boarding pass from 2000.
Bar code on a boarding pass.
Here shown in red, normally it is black for optimum readability.
A U.S. Airways boarding pass, featuring the initials SSSS , indicating that the passenger holding the pass has been selected for a Secondary Security Screening Selection check.
A handwritten Air Canada boarding pass from 1979
A mobile boarding pass and a paper boarding pass printed after online check-in.
Electronic boarding pass of an Air China flight shown on iPhone 7