I was showing off my iPhone to my uncle in SF the night before my flight back to Atlanta and decided to try checking-in for my flight from Delta’s Mobile site.  What i didn’t expect to see was a link to print a boarding pass. I took a screen grab of the boarding pass for safekeeping.
It uses the next generation of 2D barcodes that can store a lot more information than the linear barcodes we’re used to seeing.

Knowing I shouldn’t hang my hat on something so new, I printed a regular boarding pass at the airport to make it past security (TSA highlighter on my iPhone screen probably wouldn’t work so well). When I asked a Delta rep at the gate, it seemed like they had heard about it, but hadn’t seen someone come through with one of these new boarding passes yet.  They followed me up to the scanner at the jetway door only to find that the scanner wasn’t able to read the new barcode.  Totally possible that it was user error, but I wasn’t about to earn the ire of everyone behind me trying to board while I tinkered with my mobile boarding pass.

If anyone else tries the Delta mobile boarding pass and is able to get it to work successfully, I’d love to hear about it.

Another reason why this is exciting (or at least interesting) is that I could take a coupon with me on my phone to any retailer that is equipped with barcode scanners that can handle 2D barcodes. No more Sunday paper coupon clippings everywhere, plus imagine the benefit to advertisers b/c of the amount of information that could be embedded with the 2D barcode on a coupon.