Let’s be honest: travel by plane it sucks, and international travel is even worse. Of course, fate tends to make us aware of the discomforts of the journey, but aspects such as check in, endless queues and immigration processes are not at all friendly. So good, then, what steps are being taken to minimize these headaches.
THE American Airlines announced this week that it updated its app so that international passengers have one more facility: from now on, you can scan your passport directly through the airline app, eliminating the need to have your document read by an officer before boarding – and therefore avoiding another potential queue.
The whole thing works as follows: when doing the check in for your international flight, the user only needs to enter some passport information. Then, the application will ask that the device be placed against the cover of the document (or the back cover, in the case of the American passport), which has an embedded NFC chip; the app itself will then check the passport’s regularity and finalize your check in.
It is worth noting that passengers will still need to show their passport during boarding, but only for checking purposes – the whole process of opening the document and scanning it in a terminal will no longer be necessary, speeding up the whole thing.
According to AA, the new feature is being released in phases, and is expected to reach all users of the app over the next few weeks. For now, it only works with reservations for just one person – soon, the application will be updated so that the functionality also reaches reservations with multiple passengers.
We do not yet know, however, at what level is the integration of the novelty with the brazilian passports. The airline claims that the feature is available to all its passengers around the world, as long as their passports have an NFC identification chip (here, the electronic passport, which has the chip, started to be issued in 2010); in practice, however, the experience may not be that smooth.
If someone is flying with AA in the near future and has the opportunity to use the feature, be sure to tell us how it went. ?
via First Passenger | image: NextNewMedia / Shutterstock.com