Virgin Atlantic has become the first UK airline to make its mobile boarding passes compatible with Apple’s Passbook, allowing the passes to be accessed from one handy app.
Several airlines have signed up to Passbook, including Air Canada, American Airlines, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas and United.
The Apple app enables users to group together industry-standard barcodes - used by an increasing number of companies including airlines, hotel chains, rail companies, coffee shops and cinemas – into the one Passbook, for easy access.
It means that Virgin Atlantic passengers will now have the option during the online check-in process to have their boarding pass sent directly to their Passbook. An email is then sent to the passenger containing a Passbook attachment, which once opened will securely load the boarding pass into the app.
Passengers will be able to use the Passbook app when departing on Virgin flights from Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester.
The Passbook app is available on devices running Apple’s iOS 6 mobile operating system, including the iPhone 3GS and newer versions, the iPad 2, iPad with Retina display, iPad mini, and iPod touch 4th generation and newer.
For more information visit virginatlantic.com.
Report by Mark Caswell
