British Airways planning to add support for Apple's Passbook

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
The Passbook feature in iOS 6 may gain another major partner in the form of British Airways, as the airline has signaled its interest in Apple's e-ticketing system, AppleInsider has learned.

One reader reached out to British Airways about potentially supporting Apple's Passbook, and they received a response from a company representative. British Airways confirmed that its ba.com team is already looking in to Passbook support.

"I'm pleased to confirm that the ba.com team are already looking into our website being able to work with the new Apple app, available with the iOS6 upgrade," the company representative wrote in an e-mail. "Please be assured that we will get our Passbook-compatible functionality live on ba.com as soon as we can."

British Airways already offers digital boarding passes through its official iOS application. But the carrier does not yet offer integration with Apple's Passbook.

British Airways


Passbook launched with iOS 6 in September featuring support from Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Australia.

The addition of British Airways would be a major catch for Apple. The U.K.-based carrier has a fleet of 249 aircraft and serves 169 total destinations.

Just this week, Apple updated its own Apple Store application for iOS to add support for Passbook. With the new software, users can purchase gift cards and e-mail them to friends, and those cards can be stored as passes in the Passbook application in iOS 6.

Passbook is Apple's first stab at offering digital e-wallet type services on the iPhone. Rather than relying on near-field communication technology for wireless transactions, Apple has instead focused on replacing items such as store cards, boarding passes, movie tickets and retail coupons.

One of the first adopters of Passbook was Major League Baseball, which offered digital tickets for four teams at the end of the 2012 season. The league's digital ticketing operation was "floored" by the initial adoption rate for Passbook, as they found Apple's service accounted for 12 percent of MLB e-tickets.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    That's good to hear as I'm flying with BA soon.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    In the UK, my current available Passbook-using suppliers are:
    -Starbucks
    -iHotel
    -United Airlines
    -Lufthansa airlines
    -American Airlines

    That, is it.

    I might use Starbucks 4-5 times a year. The others I'm likely to use perhaps 3 or 4 times in total over the next 25 years.

    If it were available for Cinema tickets and maybe grocery store coupons perhaps it would be useful.
  • Reply 3 of 13

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by pembroke View Post



    In the UK, my current available Passbook-using suppliers are:

    -Starbucks

    -iHotel

    -United Airlines

    -Lufthansa airlines

    -American Airlines

    That, is it.

    I might use Starbucks 4-5 times a year. The others I'm likely to use perhaps 3 or 4 times in total over the next 25 years.

    If it were available for Cinema tickets and maybe grocery store coupons perhaps it would be useful.


     


    For the 'common folk'  I concur.   While I respect starbucks the company, I can't for the life of me walk in an buy their wares.   If you want to sell iP*, Passport should be at grocery/Target/Walmart.  Ideally, scan once and all coupons collected are automagically tallied for whats in your cart, and any gift cards can be referenced as well. 


     


    Big holiday shopping promo... buy an iOS device, and get a $50 Target  / BestBuy  passport coupon....  instant lock in.

  • Reply 4 of 13
    lukeilukei Posts: 379member
    BA have a fully featured App which allows for E boarding passes, on line check in, flight info and even booking/upgrading flights. What benefit would Passbook support provide?
  • Reply 5 of 13
    patsupatsu Posts: 430member
    lukei wrote: »
    BA have a fully featured App which allows for E boarding passes, on line check in, flight info and even booking/upgrading flights. What benefit would Passbook support provide?

    No need to launch the app to show your pass.

    Plus potential to perform multi-party deals. e.g. You can use the boarding pass later for a discount with airport car rental. Passbook can behave like a receipt, proof of purchase, a workflow acknowledgement, or other paper slips in the real world. It's like a HTTP cookie of the mobile world. Incredibly useful because it keeps the actor's state regardless of sites, apps, systems and businesses over long and nested transactions.
  • Reply 6 of 13


    Passport appears to have potential... but... businesses just don't seem toknow about it or how to make it work for them... and some may not have the time


     


    Just my back seat driving opinion - Apple - at each of your Apple stores, hire one person who's sole job is to go out and canvas the local establishments to sign up for passport. sign them up coupon codes, customer loyalty programs etc. A whole iTunes page could be started for the thousands of potential businesses.


     


    (Groupon... this might make you worthy too!).

  • Reply 7 of 13
    Air Canada has also added support for Passbook.
  • Reply 8 of 13


    I like Passbook, and really hope more and more companies support it.  I use it in Starbucks every couple of days, really liked it for my Giants baseball tickets, and it's great with Fandango as well.


     


    My wish list is:


     


    Southwest Airlines (their own app is so dreadful, not needing to open that anymore would be great!)


    NHL.  I'd love to have my Sharks season tickets all appear in Passbook.  While the NHL isn't staging any hockey, perhaps they could spend their time making this happen!

  • Reply 9 of 13
    I just used Passbook on Lufthansa for a flight from Detroit to Frankfurt and a connecting train ride. Lufthansa issued the ticket for Deutsche Bahn (the rail service) as well. They scanned without any problem even though they don't offer Passbook support for their own app. Honestly, not dealing with any paper tickets and/or two different apps is super convenient!
  • Reply 10 of 13

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tobiaswac View Post



    I just used Passbook on Lufthansa for a flight from Detroit to Frankfurt and a connecting train ride. Lufthansa issued the ticket for Deutsche Bahn (the rail service) as well. They scanned without any problem even though they don't offer Passbook support for their own app. Honestly, not dealing with any paper tickets and/or two different apps is super convenient!


     


    I know it won't happen, but this is why I wish Apple would make Passbook open source and hence available on all phones.


     


    The convenience of having everything in one place is fantastic, but that's not going to happen until there is one (or maybe two) standards for everyone to get behind.

  • Reply 11 of 13

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson View Post


     


    I know it won't happen, but this is why I wish Apple would make Passbook open source and hence available on all phones.


     


    The convenience of having everything in one place is fantastic, but that's not going to happen until there is one (or maybe two) standards for everyone to get behind.



     


    Well, it's just barcode scanning, so, it's not like they've developed some proprietary standard. There's no reason other platforms couldn't implement the same thing.

  • Reply 12 of 13

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


     


    Well, it's just barcode scanning, so, it's not like they've developed some proprietary standard. There's no reason other platforms couldn't implement the same thing.



     


    I didn't realize that.  So there's no reason why someone other than Apple couldn't develop an app for Blackberry or Android and where, say Fandango says, "add to Passbook", it could equally go into a third party app on Android or Blackberry (assuming of course you are using the Fandango for Blackberry app)?

  • Reply 13 of 13


    I am surprised that doofus judge isn't ordering Apple to post the outcome of the ruling on the British Airways passbook e-ticket as well.

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