Google Now Gives You Boarding Passes On Your Phone

If you are like most of us who love our Android smartphones, you have probably felt some envy for the Apple crowd. That is because the Apple iOS and apps are able to provide the Apple Passbook which gives you electronic tickets instead of paper ones. The big thing is it provides you with boarding passes for airlines so you don't have to pre-print your boarding pass from home or hit the kiosk before you go to the gate. For Android users, we have been looking at this great feature waiting for the day we could get it on our Android phones.

In January, Google unveiled their Google Now with the boarding pass feature. And with that, the envy for the Apple folks goes away and you can now use your smartphone to show your boarding pass at the gate to board. All you have to do is check-in online before arriving at the gate. That is is and you are doing it without paper helping the environment.

Google Now boarding passes are using a QRCode to be scanned at the gate which is different than what you normally see as a bar code. But, as the screen shows, there is everything visible that you need from the terminal and gate down to your seat number and boarding group. All right there on your smart phone. And while not all the airlines are on board with this yet, so we expect to see more of them as time goes by. That is the same situation when Apple's Passbook first came out last year, so watch for a growing list of airlines participating with Google on the Google Now Cards.

This does require the Google Search app in order to use Google Now to show your boarding pass. And it is not limited to that as it has other cards you can create to keep track of things, such as sports scores and electronic tickets to movies. This is a great feature and one that is customizable based on your individual needs. If you have not taken a look at Google Now, this is a great time to do so.