Why You Should Always Print Your Boarding Pass
Imagine waiting in line for an agonizing 40 minutes to go through security. You're scrolling on your phone to stay sane as the battery quickly wanes in the background. As Murphy's Law would have it, your phone dies the moment you get up to the TSA agent and have to present your boarding pass. Having a dead phone is worse than having no phone. That's exactly what happened to Karen Kapnik, an avid traveler who flies a lot for work and often has tight connections. 'I had to go all the way back to the area where you can print a boarding pass,' Kapnik tells Travel + Leisure about the time her phone died at the most inopportune moment. Even though she describes herself as an 'early adopter of the mobile boarding pass' that embarrassing incident that almost made her miss her flight was enough to convince her to always print her boarding pass in the future.
When Adam Scott was founding BermudAir, a Bermuda-based airline in the process of launching a sister airline, AnguillAir, he made sure the company's app supported Apple Wallet so passengers could save their mobile boarding passes after checking in online. That said, Scott tells T+L that BermudAir always recommends travelers carry a printed copy, too. 'In some international airports, mobile service or Wi-Fi access may be limited,' he explains. 'Having a physical copy on hand helps avoid unnecessary stress and ensures a smooth check-in and boarding experience from start to finish." Of course, you can always get around having to pull your app or email up by taking a screenshot of your boarding pass in advance. Still, it's easy to forget to do that. Plus, if your phone dies and you can't access your photo library, you're still out of luck.
Although the JetBlue app comes close with a 4.9-star average rating in the App Store, no airline app is perfect. 'I just dealt with this in Italy two days ago,' says travel advisor Rebekah Ingraham. 'We were on a tight connection through Paris, and my mobile boarding pass kept switching from available to not available on the airline's app.' Former flight attendant-turned-travel expert Bobby Laurie can relate. 'Once my flight was cancelled, and in order to rebook me, the agent at the airport needed to scan my boarding pass,' Laurie tells T+L. 'Except when the flight was cancelled, the mobile boarding pass disappeared.' Laurie had to wait 20 minutes for the agent to look up the reservation and track down the missing boarding pass before she could rebook him. In those scenarios, 20 minutes can be all the difference between getting on the next flight out later that night or getting bumped to a flight that doesn't leave until the next day.
Finally, you should always print out your boarding pass because the printed-out version may have more information than its mobile counterpart. For example, it often includes your ticket number—which you may need if you have to call the airline to request a refund. The mobile boarding pass typically only includes your confirmation number.
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