Passengers using the Heathrow Airport will soon be enjoying the latest boarding pass technology offered by Continental Airlines.

Continental will be the first airline to be offering paperless boarding for its flight from the UK to the US. Under the initiative, passengers will be given a boarding pass directly to their mobile phones or PDAs, thus eliminating the need for conventional paper tickets and boarding cards.

Vice President for Reservations and E-commerce of Continental, Martin Hand, said that the service improvement was due to consumer demands. He said that the airline has plans to offer the self-service technology to its domestic and international flights in the future.

Passengers that will be using the new service will receive a two-dimensional barcode on their mobile phones or PDAs that can be easily read by scanners installed at the checkpoints and boarding gates. Besides from the paperless boarding passes, Continental will also send flight information to the passengers’ mobile phone devices to allow them to track their flights and other onboard amenities.

Continental operates five flights a day to Heathrow. Three of its flights are from New York while the remaining two from Houston.  The airline had also announced earlier that it will be using the newest, flat-bed seats in BusinessFirst for all Heathrow flights effective 2 June.