Testing the Continental Mobile Boarding Pass

Houstonist told you about Continental's new mobile boarding pass service in last week's Tech Buzz. This week we tested the service.

Step 1: Check-in via the Continental PDA web site (http://pda.continental.com/)
Assuming you have web access on your PDA (duh), you should be able to complete this on the shuttle ride from the parking lot like we did. Navigating to the mobile site was painless. And, the email containing our boarding pass hyperlink hit our inbox in just under a minute.

Step 2: Clear security
Clearing security is usually a pain in the butt. That did not change a bit with our electronic boarding pass. The TSA agent had not been properly trained (her words) on using the bar code scanner and another agent had to come lend a hand. Turns out that the key is to turn on the scanner prior to attempting to scan the bar code. Huh. Who knew?

Step 3: Board the aircraft
One would think that this should be quick since the departure gates are all equipped with scanners, wouldn't one? Well, this is where Houstonist fouled up. See, we closed our phone without first saving the link to the boarding pass as a favorite, as suggested by Continental. Oops. We stood on the Elite Access blue carpet for at least five extra minutes while reloading the boarding pass. There went our overhead bin space.

The service is slick but slow - at least with Houstonist's not-so-smart phone. We recommend using the service only if: you are able to navigate to the actual boarding pass fairly quickly; you do not care about being further delayed clearing security; or, you are running late and need to check-in on your way to the airport, which is what we did today. We will likely continue checking-in via the Continental PDA site since that part is easy. But, we'll be picking up a printed boarding pass at a self-check-in kiosk since that makes everything else easy.