Apple presses ahead with aim to replace paper passports and ID with iPhone
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
Boarding passes are another thing. Airline employees are not the most accommodating in the world, but probably more accommodating than border guards. I'm sure a gate agent can look up or reissue a boarding pass when I have an ID and credit card in hand. And worst case, you miss the flight. You don't get locked in the airport.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209495
One might argue that even the reserve power might run out on a really long flight, say like a SIN-JFK. But most travelers these days carry battery packs so it’s not a big deal. Even if they don’t, a neighboring passenger would probably have one, and a few minutes of charging should suffice.
But in reality I imagine this would be more useful for shorter/frequent cross border trips like say at the US Canada border. For longer trips, most people would probably still want to carry a paper passport as a backup. Phones can fail for many reasons.
Boarding passes are already largely electronic in the US. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a printed boarding pass. Plus all you need to reprint your boarding pass at a kiosk is your record locator. This is largely a solved problem.
You could keep your passport securely in your bag or pocket, and then use the phone to save time.
It's similar to using a phone to pay for things using Apple Pay or Google Pay - you can still get your credit card out of your wallet to pay, but grabbing your phone might be more convenient.
Personally however this would be awesome. It is extremely rare I don’t have my phone. already any passport control area is digitally scanning my passport so there is not really more privacy concerns. In addition I imagine a lot of us use the plane ticket features of iphone already, so not having to also separately get my ID out would be great.
Seems like this is long overdue.
I don't think saving a few grams of paper is worth all that.