American Airlines launches mobile boarding passes

Holiday travel season is just around the corner, and if you're flying American Airlines, you now have the option to have your boarding pass sent to your mobile phone or PDA. The airline just announced it will be testing mobile boarding passes in Chicago O'Hare, Los Angeles International, and Santa Ana John Wayne/Orange County (SNA) airports, which means no more lost or misplaced boarding passes when you travel—unless you lose your phone, of course.

The airline's site explains the process on the website, which basically says a boarding pass can be emailed to you when you check-in. You do, however, have to open the email from your phone's browser and save the boarding pass to your phone as it contains a 2-D barcode that will get you through all those security checkpoints.

The Chicago Tribune says the mobile boarding option is more secure than paper boarding passes, and cannot be forged because it employs encryption technology that guards against forgeries. To be on the safe side, the airline will allow these boarding passes on non-stop and same-plane flights only.

The service is already available for all Chicago O'Hare outbound flights, and will soon launch in Los Angeles and John Wayne flights on November 17.

What do you think? Will this make travelling easy or just complicate things?