Mobiles could become 'indispensable' for air travellers

Research from Sita, a leading provider of IT facilities to the aviation industry, has indicated that mobile phones could become an 'indispensable tool' for air travellers over the next five years.

The company pointed out that phones can be used as "personal travel folders", with the potential to hold boarding passes, baggage tracking information and other data.

Sita's research, which was distributed today (June 19th) at the Air Transport IT summit in Brussels, predicts that there will be five billion mobile customers by 2011 and phones will become increasingly sophisticated in their capabilities.

Travellers are expected to soon have easy access to mobile-enabled e-travel services such as real-time flight updates, self-service booking, check-in and boarding.

"Some of these services are already available to passengers, for example in Norway, Japan and Germany paperless travel is a reality on some routes," said Jim Peters, Sita's chief technology officer.

"But what our research shows is that these mobile services will be available to all travellers worldwide over the next five years. In fact, by the end of 2010, 67 per cent of airlines plan to offer mobile check-in. By then 82 per cent of airlines also plan to offer notification services on mobiles."

Bmi recently announced that it is trialling paperless check-in procedures, which involve sending boarding passes to passengers' phones, on some of its services from Heathrow Airport.

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