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A Virgin Australia passenger running a beta version of iOS 6 claims he received a prompt to save a digital boarding pass to Passbook when he opened it in Safari on his iPhone, indicating that the airline already has support set up for Apple’s forthcoming app being released with iOS 6.
The digital boarding pass must have been using Apple’s new “.pkpass” mime type, which is the file type that allows the Safari browser and email clients to recognize boarding passes for Passbook storage. It has been available to developers for some time, but up until now there has been little evidence of a major airline utilizing it. Currently only United Airlines has officially signed on to support Passbook, but other carriers are sure to follow suit soon as many already support barcode-based digital ticketing.
Passbook is a native application launching with iOS 6 designed to organize boarding passes, movie and sports tickets, store loyalty cards, gift cards and coupons all in one place. The tickets and cards are stored as tabs within the app for quick access to electronic versions of all their passes.
The app will utilize the iPhone’s geo-location function to pull up the appropriate card when it is needed, such as pulling up a Starbucks card when going into a Starbucks or your movie tickets when you arrive at the theater. It will also have a live update feature to notify you in real time of any changes to your tickets, such as a delay or gate change when you’re at the airport.
The release of iOS 6 should occur this month, and could happen as soon as the September 12 event next week.
[via Apple Insider]
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