Wondering what an electronic boarding pass is, where to get it and how you use one?

Look no more, read our introduction to boarding pass.

Paper boarding pass

Those of you who have been around are acquainted with how travelling by air works. But for those of you who have just began their aerial adventures we prepared an introduction to the concept of electronic boarding pass.

A boarding pass is also called a boarding card. It is a document issued after check-in. It allows you to board the aircraft. In this day and age it is ever more popular to check-in online and get one's boarding pass issued as an email or text message.

On your boarding card you can find such personal information as your flight number, departure time or surname. Your boarding pass will look more or less like this travel document from Norwegian Air Shuttle sent via email:

Once you check-in on internet,you can print such it and take it with you so that you spend less time in airport queues. In some cases, like when you travel with Ryanair, you have no choice but to print it on your own unless you are willing to pay a horrendous fee.

Mobile boarding pass

The latest craze in the world of airlines is a paperless boarding pass chosen by many smart phones users. Many, though not all airlines, offer mobile check-in along with mobile boarding pass. It does not apply to all airlines. Moreover, airlines that do offer such on option may restrict it to certain routes.

The mobile card has the same kind of bar code as that on a paper boarding pass. The bar code is machine readable so all it takes is for the gate attendant to scan the code on the phone displayed.

Here is a example of a mobile boarding card used by Virgin Blue.

The picture above comes from planetalkingli­ve.com

Here come two more examples of boarding cards so that you get familiar with the kind of variety of layout that you will encounter.

First comes Air Berlin boarding pass:

And the Ryanair boarding pass: