Alaska, Horizon launch paperless boarding and mobile.alaskaair.com

Travellers on Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air flights now have one less thing to carry – a printed boarding pass – after the two airlines introduced electronic boarding passes in seven cities and also launched mobile.alaskaair.com.

The electronic boarding pass allows customers flying from Anchorage, Alaska; Boise, Idaho; Denver; Las Vegas; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Spokane, Washington, to receive boarding information and check in with any mobile device.

"Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air's electronic boarding pass and optimised mobile website meet the needs of today's high-tech traveller," explained Steve Jarvis, Alaska Airlines' vice-president of marketing, sales and customer experience. "Starting today, our customers can expedite the airport check-in process even more and get from curbside to planeside in record time."

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air will offer electronic boarding passes from 24 February to passengers flying from San Jose, California, and Fairbanks, Alaska. By late-March, electronic boarding passes also will be available for customers travelling from five California cities: Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, Palm Springs and Sacramento. The airlines will expand the programme to many other cities throughout the year.

Customers using mobile devices should look for an asterisk next to the departing city during the online check-in process to determine which airports have electronic boarding passes. After completing the check-in process, passengers must save or bookmark the electronic boarding pass web-page for easy retrieval during the security screening and boarding process.

Like a paper boarding pass, passengers can obtain their electronic boarding passes at mobile.alaskaair.com up to 24 hours in advance and up to one hour prior to departure. Each electronic boarding pass displays an encrypted barcode along with passenger and flight information that is scanned and verified by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at the security checkpoint. Passengers are still required to show photo identification to TSA agents.

The airlines also announced that alaskaair.com is now designed to fit small screens on handheld mobile devices, providing customers with access to flight status information, flight schedules, web check-in and flight alerts. The mobile website also gives customers access to download electronic boarding passes.

"We've designed mobile.alaskaair.com with information travellers want on the day of flight," remarked Jarvis. "Later this year, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air customers will see more mobile device enhancements to make travel more convenient."