NFC SIM airport check-In takes the pain out of airline tickets
Dan Seitz 
One thing that always bothered us about using your iPad to check in at an airport is the fact that, if your iPad is dead, you’re pretty much completely up the creek. You’ve got to wait in line for a paper ticket, or wait for your iPad to connect to the achingly slow networks all airports seem to have, and it just seems pointless.
Fortunately, for those of us who don’t want to spend $500 on an iPad, SITA, an air transportation computer company, has a brilliant idea: using your cell phone to check in.
Any cell phone. Even if it’s completely dead.
The idea is that tickets are stored on an NFC, or near-field communication, chip that’s embedded in your phone’s SIM card. We know we just threw a lot of acronyms you don’t care about at you, so to simplify: it would put the technology used in your office key card onto your phone, using the tiny card your phone already uses to store your contacts and phone number.
There are a lot of advantages to this. One, you don’t need a fancy smartphone; you just need a cell phone. Two, this is technology so basic your grandpa who blew away his last monitor with a shotgun can use it. And three, as we mentioned, it can be used even if your phone is dead.
Why should we do this? Because it’ll vastly streamline pretty much everything about air travel. You buy a ticket, your phone is pinged, and you can now walk into the airport, avoid the ticket desk entirely, go straight to security, and even board the plane simply, quickly, and easily. Of course, it’ll still cost a fortune, but at least you won’t be homicidal when you get on the plane.
SITA demonstrates NFC SIM boarding pass [NFC World]
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