JetBlue will soon accept Apple Pay at 35,000 feet

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As soon as next year, Apple may make it possible for you to send money to friends and family from your iPhone.
Apple Pay is taking off in a big way. Ba-doom-tish. Photo: USA Today
Photo: USA Today

The hope with Apple Pay is that everywhere there are financial transactions, there will be Apple’s mobile payment solution — and, yes, that includes the sky.

Starting next week, passengers on select JetBlue Airways flights will be able to pay for food, drinks and assorted on-board amenities (such as upgrading seats) using their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. This gives JetBlue the claim to fame that it is the first airline to accept Apple Pay at 35,000 feet.

At first, Apple Pay will be available only on flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and San Francisco and Los Angeles. Extra flights will be added in March, and all JetBlue flights will accept Apple Pay by June. By then, the NFC-equipped Apple Watch will also have launched, providing an extra way to pay.

To be able to better process the new mobile payments, older terminals are being swapped out for iPad minis with NFC-capable cases. These are being issued to more than 3,500 flight crew members, after being approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

This isn’t the first time JetBlue has demonstrated its Apple love. Back in 2013, the airline made the decision to ditch its heavy paper flight manuals in favor of iPads, capable of serving up real-time information to the cockpit during flight.

While using Apple Pay benefits passengers rather than pilots, it is likely to find similar success on board. Shelling out money to buy things on airplanes can be a pain at the best of times, which makes Apple Pay a perfect solution to the problem — and means JetBlue will almost certainly pave the way for adoption by other airlines.

Currently there’s no word on when passengers with Google Wallet or other mobile payment systems will be able to pay using their phones on JetBlue flights, but it’s apparently planned sometime “down the road.”

Photo: USA Today

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