United Airlines travellers connecting to flights operated by the carrier’s 19 partner airlines can now receive their boarding pass on their smartphones when using its mobile app.
This is the first time a US carrier has enabled this functionality through its mobile app. Previously, travellers using the United app would only be able to receive boarding passes for the United-operated flights in their itinerary.
“As we continue to make improvements to the United app, we found that simply allowing our customers to access boarding passes for their entire itinerary within the same app made a big difference,” said Kate Gebo, the airline’s chief customer officer.
“Our partnerships with Star Alliance carriers and other partner airlines can take our customers to over a thousand destinations around the world, and we’re excited to be the first US carrier to provide customers with this convenience when connecting to partners.”
It’s important to note that currently not all Star Alliance member airlines are included in United’s new app boarding pass functionality, however. These include Air China, Air India, Avianca, Copa Airlines, Egyptair, Ethiopian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways and TAP Air Portugal. United has said that additional partner airlines will be added in the near future, however.
There are also two non-Star Alliance United partner airlines, Azul Brazilian Airlines and Cape Air, for which mobile app boarding passes are available.
The full list of eligible airlines is as follows:
- Adria Airways
- Aegean Airlines
- Air Canada
- Air New Zealand
- All Nippon Airways (ANA)
- Asiana Airlines
- Azul Brazilian Airlines
- Brussels Airlines
- Cape Air
- Croatia Airlines
- EVA Airways
- LOT Polish Airlines
- Lufthansa
- Scandinavian Airlines
- Shenzhen Airlines
- Swiss
- Thai Airways
- Turkish Airlines
While many airlines have been expanding their mobile boarding pass offerings, typically this only includes flights operated by that airline and doesn’t extend to those flown by partner carriers.
Earlier this year, Australian flag carrier Qantas expanded its mobile boarding pass service to include its trans-Tasman services between Australia and New Zealand as well as its domestic flights.
Low-cost carrier Jetstar, meanwhile, extended mobile boarding passes to its flights originating from Singapore to 21 destinations in Asia-Pacific.
This isn’t the only expansion United has made to its check-in services recently. Last month, the airline began enabling travellers to check-in for their flights as well as access other flight information using Amazon’s digital assistant, Amazon Alexa, when using an Amazon Echo or Amazon Echo Dot device.
