My iPhone, my boarding pass

I had read of some airlines doing away with the physical boarding pass, and instead using the handphone in its place. I love the idea of just showing the flight attendant my iPhone and board the aircraft. That would be so cool.

Well, looks like I can now join the cool crowd with Malaysia Airlines' newly launched MHmobile - flymas.mobi.

This application was launched late in December amid much publicity. The advert proclaims: "Introducing flymas.mobi. Fly the easy way. Now you can simply book, pay and fly with a few simple taps on your mobile phone. Giving you convenience and flexibility while you are on the move".

I told myself I had to try out this new application to see if it delivers what it promises. This is because certain mobile apps do not exactly perform the way they said they would. And this is speaking from personal experience as I have downloaded a number of apps to my iPhone to enable me to work and play on the go.

I prefer to book my flights on my mobile instead of buying online, but so far my experience with mobile booking has not been smooth, and I have stopped doing it. But the publicity over flymas.mobi rekindled my interest . So I decided to test drive it and, perhaps if it delivers what it promises, then I would give mobile booking another go.

Downloading the application to my iPhone via Safari was completed in a jiffy, no hassle, no hanging up. The interface/home page is clean and minimal, free of clutter and photos. Apart from the MAS logo it just has a listing of the various services - book a flight to check in, check flight status, trace delayed baggage, timetable, to name a few.

What I like most is the "Deal and Offers". With just a click I am taken to the page that has some new launch deals from Kuala Lumpur to various cities in the ASEAN region with one-way fare stated.
I next made a tentative flight and the entire process was fast and smooth too. You can pay for the booking immediately, check in as well as to update on your flight status. Although I did not complete the entire process, all the links I clicked opened immediately.

I was told that if I had completed the booking process I would receive a 2D boarding pass after check-in, which replaces the physical boarding pass. You simply wave your phone at the flight attendant before boarding the aircraft - a first for a Malaysian airline.

Developed together with SITA Lab, fly.mas.mobi also boasts of a number of other "firsts". It is also the first mobile airline app that connects bookings to Facebook, TripIt and Dopplr, enabling friends and colleagues to be informed about each other's travel plans.

In another major first it allows passengers to check the status of a delayed bag as the application can link to SITA's WorldTracer, the industry-standard, fully-automated system for tracing lost and mishandled used by over 440 airlines and ground-handling companies worldwide.

Malaysia Airlines Managing Director/CEO, Tengku Dato' Azmil Zahruddin said the airline did not want to simply miniaturise its website for use on mobile phones but instead created an offering based on one web application, one link and one click with no download required.

"Our mobile services had to work well on all web-enabled mobile phones," he said.

My verdict: flymas.mobi is user friendly and very easy to use. It is fast to go from one service to another, rather seamlessly too, on both WiFi and 3G (I tested on both). I will, from now, use this app whenever I have to fly on MAS.

Note: flymas.mobi supports all major operating systems and manufacturers including Blackberry, the iPhone, Android Google phone, Symbian (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson) and Windows Mobile (HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson).