Self-Boarding Comes to First US Airport

For Continental passengers flying out of Houston, boarding a plane has become a lot more like getting on the subway. The airport is the first in America to test "self-boarding" gates, in which passengers simply run their boarding passes through a machine before getting on the plane without having to hand it to a staff member, USA Today reports.

Airline staffers will still be at the gate performing other duties. The TSA says that since passengers pass through security checks earlier, the agency has determined that self-boarding gates won’t impact security. Fourteen other airlines worldwide use the technology, and self-boarding gates are expected to proliferate in the US if the Houston experiment is a success.
(More Continental Airlines stories.)