Boarding Passes Are So Last Year

Airlines are working on transitioning their electronic check-in systems to allow passengers to use their cell phones as boarding passes. Continenal is the first to test the system, in which a scannable bar code is displayed on the phone's screen, and the passenger never has to deal with a paper boarding pass. “We definitely see this as the wave of the future,” a TSA spokesman told the New York Times.

The agency is working with Continental to make sure security on the new system will be up to snuff. The technology being used is a two-dimensional bar code, which is harder to copy than a traditional bar code. “When we scan the bar code, we know if it’s been manipulated or if someone has tried to manipulate it in any way," says the spokeswoman. (More airline stories.)