Haven’t you heard? Faffing around with your printer and carrying around endless pieces of paper is so last year. Budget airline EasyJet is now encouraging its customers to use a smartphone to check in, with boarding passes now made available digitally in Passbook for iOS and in dedicated apps.
Free apps have been made available for Android and iPhone users through the Google Play Store and App Store respectively. These apps allow you to check in for a flight up to 2 hours before departure and download a boarding pass. Once downloaded, you don’t need a mobile internet or Wi-Fi connection in order to access the pass again.
For iPhone users with the new iOS 6 software, integration with the Passbook app is also available. For those unfamiliar with Passbook, it’s a digital wallet that holds tickets, boarding passes, loyalty cards and such. You’ll be able to store your EasyJet boarding passes in here for easy access, which is neat.
To begin with EasyJet will run with digital boarding passes as a trial scheme, with only six airports included. So, if you’re travelling from Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Manchester, Nice, Southend or Stansted in the near future then get your smartphone at the ready.
The apps will only allow for a single boarding pass to be downloaded and stored at any one time, although in time the ability to download multiple passes will be added. EasyJet also says it will be launching web versions of its apps to allow BlackBerry and Windows Phone users to also check in with their mobiles.
Get the app from the Play Store for Android or the App Store for iPhone.