Airport Check-in: More e-board; carousel ads make the rounds
— -- The use of electronic boarding passes, embraced only by a few tech-savvy travelers a year ago, is spreading rapidly.
American Airlines amr has expanded its e-boarding pass program to customers departing from Las Vegas McCarran, Atlanta Hartsfield and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Customers can download their bar-coded boarding passes from the airline's website to their Web-enabled smartphones and proceed directly to security, where screeners scan the phone to match the ID.
Delta dal has also recently introduced the service for domestic customers departing from Salt Lake City.
Its service is also available at Atlanta, Las Vegas, Memphis and Minneapolis-St. Paul; Detroit and Indianapolis (Northwest only); and New York-LaGuardia (Delta only).
•Baggage carousel advertising, a fast-growing trend, is coming to Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston Logan.
Operated by DoubleTake Marketing, it's comprised of a large adhesive graphic that's placed on the moving portion of the baggage carousel.
DoubleTake's ads are also found at Chicago O'Hare and Midway, Kansas City, Albany and Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss. Ad sizes range from 20-inch segments to an entire bag belt.
•Delta Air Lines and Air France/KLM have opened a co-branded lounge at London Heathrow's Terminal 4.
The two-level lounge, which is available for use by first-class and other elite customers of SkyTeam partner airlines, contains a spa, restaurant, day beds, massage chairs, wine bar, oxygen bar and an entertainment station with computer games. It also features an "indoor living wall" with more than 60 species of plants.
The lounge makes its debut less than a month after the Air France KLM Group and Delta announced a long-term joint venture in which they'll coordinate trans-Atlantic operations and share revenue and costs.
The airlines will cooperate on routes between North America and Africa, the Middle East and India, as well as on flights between Europe and Latin America.
•Kansas City International now offers valet parking. Customers using the service can pull up to a valet facility and leave the keys with an attendant. They are then driven to their gate by shuttle. An uncovered space costs $7 per day, and a covered space is priced at $11.
•In a three-month trial, British Airways is providing free London black cabs for first- and business-class passengers living within 100 miles of Heathrow.
Facts and Figures
•Has the recent air traffic downturn bottomed out? In April, global passenger traffic fell 3% from the year-ago period, a slower pace of decline than earlier in the year, according to Geneva-based Airports Council International.
Global traffic fell 1.8%, but domestic traffic fell more sharply, by 4.9%.
"We are encouraged to see that the declining traffic trend seen in the first quarter appears to be easing," says Angela Gittens, director general of ACI. "If we look at the long-term trends, we may be near a turnaround point, but it is too early to call a recovery."
The Middle East (+8.6%) continued to register growth, while Europe (-4.5%) and North America (-6.0%) showed more modest declines than in the first quarter. The effects of the swine flu virus on April's figures were minor, since the outbreak occurred at the end of the month, ACI says.
New Routes
•Delta will launch non-stop service between Detroit Metro, its second-largest hub, and Shanghai on June 1.
Every Monday, we report on the latest news in airports across the USA. See something noteworthy in your travels? E-mail your suggestions to ryu@usatoday.com.