Experiment starts at Boston, DCA, Newark

A Transportation Security Administration experiment with paperless boarding passes, started several weeks ago with Continental Airlines at Houston Bush Intercontinental, is being expanded to some other airports. The tests started recently at Washington Reagan National and Boston Logan, and are due to begin this week at Newark. Continental passengers who decide to try the procedure need a web-enabled cell phone or PDA. Their flight confirmation will be emailed to them along with an encrypted bar code on the screen of their device, which they will show to TSA officers at the airport. The TSA personnel will scan the bar code with a handheld device to verify their flight before allowing them through security. More than 500 Continental passengers a day at Houston have been using the system.