Air Travel gets mobile...

... with the introduction of mobile boarding passes. Currently, it seems to be Air Canada, Continental Airlines and Lufthansa with the latter only for flights within Germany.

Maybe, it's coming to an airport near us shortly as well, and fingers crossed, it's not arriving at Terminal 5.

The concept is quite remarkably simple: You check in online, the airline texts you a "Mobile Boarding Pass" which consists of a barcode and a confirmation and the barcode can be scanned at the gate to allow you to board.

For details about how it works with Lufthansa, a lenghty description can be found here. And even though a boarding pass printed less here and there will most certainly not help save huge areas of woodland, it is just one less piece of documentation that can be lost, misplaced or forgotten.

Apparently, British Airways is looking into it although the timeframe mentioned is the year 2010. Maybe they do need to sort out 15,000 pieces of lost luggage at T5 first.