Australia's new domestic airline Virgin Blue will be hitting the airwaves to speed up passenger check-in. Its staff will use handheld PCs connected wirelessly to their main ticketing system, to provide tickets and boarding passes to passengers before they reach the car park.
The system, developed in Brisbane by Barcode Product (BCP), has created worldwide interest and is expected to slash costs and passenger waiting times.
BCP managing director John Peacock said passengers would be able to pull up to the kerb and check in as they unloaded their bags from the car.
While other countries, such as the United States, had kerbside check-in stations this system was totally portable. Virgin staff will carry a handheld computer and portable printer as well as a supply of bar-coded baggage labels.
Once they entered the passenger's details they could print out the ticket and boarding pass using the printer on their belt and scan the baggage label to match the bags with the ticket. It could be done from anywhere with in 200 to 300 metres of Virgin's back-end ticketing system.
Peacock said the system, which uses Symbol Technologies' Spectrum 24, 2.4 GHz network, could also be used for queue busting. Staff would be able to check-in people with small amounts of baggage who were stuck in long queues as the flight was about to board.
Virgin is so impressed with the system it is looking at introducing to its Virgin Express airline in Europe. Discussions have also started with Southwest Airline in the United States.
Peacock said while the first generation system used cables to connect the Symbol handheld PCs to the portable printers, the second generation was likely to use Bluetooth wireless networking.
BCP's system, which is an adaptation of one the company has sold to supermarket chains throughout the country, has already been installed in Brisbane ready for Virgin Blue's August launch, and will be installed in Sydney this week.
