Apple's taking over. That’s clear. Now it seems the company has a notion to get involved in travel ticketing, boarding passes and check-in tech with a new app for that, called ‘iTravel’.

Look to Patently Apple, who’ve unearthed the patent which is evidently being developed with the airlines in order to ensure the iPhone can deliver the goods - and the security - when ticketless travel makes it to prime time in years to come.

Apple's iTravel focuses on such matters as airline check-in and baggage identification, advanced electronic ID, car rentals, hotel and airline reservations and so forth. “Apple's iTravel is yet another Near Field Communications based application within a host of recent revelations,” reveals Patently Apple. That’s all-based on those varied technologies for this Apple’s been tinkering with for a while - RFID chips in your iPhones are coming.

It gets interesting, the upgraded iPhone camera can take digital images of travel documents, after which the device can use optical character recognition (OCR) software, barcode reading software, and/or QR code reading software to extract ticket information from the image!

Traveler identification information, such as a photograph, fingerprint, or retinal scan, may be accessed from the local server or the web service for verification of the traveler's identity.

There’s so much to this patent, including security and identity check implementations, ticket purchasing, and so much more.

It even introduces the concept of an automated security checking process where users of the iTravel app could process themselves through the security clearance system and check themselves in at the boarding gate...

Oh, and it looks a little to us like the iPhone can even alert you when your baggage is circling its way to you on the baggage reclaim.