Carrier will try out cell phone passes in Indianapolis

Northwest Airlines on May 28 will start offering a paperless boarding pass option for passengers boarding domestic Northwest flights at Indianapolis Airport. Customers who check in for their Indianapolis flights at nwa.com can have the paperless boarding pass sent to their cell phone or other wireless device, where it is displayed on the screen for scanning at airport security. The electronic boarding pass includes the passenger’s travel information on a mobile barcode. The procedure is similar to one that Continental Airlines has started testing, under the guidance of the Transportation Security Administration, at Houston Bush Intercontinental and a few other airports. Northwest said that after the Indianapolis experiment is up and running, it will work with the TSA to “expand the E-Boarding Pass option to additional cities in the near future.”