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TECHNOLOGY REALLY TAKES FLIGHT

SITA, THE WORLD'S LEADING air transport communications specialist and the company behind in-flight phones supplier OnAir, says near-field communications and Web 2.0 technologies could soon revolutionise air travel.

Near-field communication, or NFC, enables mobile devices to be used as swipe cards, similar to Transport for London's Oystercard system, while Web 2.0 will enable airlines to offer even more personalised services.

SITA's chief technology officer, Jim Peters, says even the invention of the jet engine will pale into insignificance beside the mobile revolution. Mobile boarding passes alone could save the world airline industry US$500 million a year.

"In the near future," says Peters, "when a customer makes a booking, the airline website could extract the passenger's preferences from its frequent flyer programme, combine it with external content from travel websites so that hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions can be overlaid on a Google map, and the traveller can then take a virtual sightseeing tour and be linked into friends' travel plans."

Advances in NFC technology - which uses high-frequency signals to transfer information at very high speeds over a distance of around four inches, thus enabling phones or PDAs to act as swipe cards - may mean travel paperwork could go the way of the dodo.

"NFC makes it possible to provide electronic services to travellers in a simple way while reducing the amount of paper and plastic cards a passenger has to carry for a journey. An NFC-embedded mobile phone may be all that's necessary for a passenger to take their flight," says Peters.