Air France is currently trialling new boarding passes on mobile phones which don’t leave a paper trail. The trial is taking place on flights between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam. Passengers only need personal identification as a message containing a secure barcode is sent your mobile phone which is then scanned at the boarding gate. The message contains all the normal information shown on a boarding pass but just in an electronic form. According to Patrick Roux, vice-president of marketing for Air France: “This is the first time customers will be able to travel to and from two countries with an electronic boarding pass”. Although it sounds like a good idea, what happens if the screen of your phone is really scratched and can’t be scanned?
Posts Tagged ‘Amsterdam’
The end of paper boarding passes?
September 6th, 2008Virgin biofuel flight
February 25th, 2008Yesterday Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to fly a commercial plane on a blend including biofuel. A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 flew from London Heathrow to Amsterdam Schiphol fuelled with a 20% biofuel/80% kerosene mixture in one of its four engines. The biofuel used a combination of coconut oil and babassu nut oil which came from sustainably cultivated crops. However, according to the BBC “Environmentalists have branded the flight a publicity stunt and claim biofuel cultivation is not sustainable”. Greenpeace has said that “last year, a leaked World Bank report said the steep food price rises of around 75 per cent seen over the year were mainly driven by biofuel production in US and Europe”. Now as much I like the idea of air travel being more environmentally friendly it brings about the question, who is right about biofuel? Are airlines just testing biofuels for more publicity or are they really trying to save the planet? Unfortunately we will not know the answers to these for a few years yet…..
