Paper or Electronic Boarding Pass

Yesterday I went to print my airplane boarding pass at the office before heading to the airport. One of my good friends seemed surprised that I didn't just send the boarding pass to my phone. He knows me as a technically-savvy guy and figured an electronic boarding pass on the phone is better than a printed one.

This is a discussion I have with several of my frequent flyer buddies all the time. Some of us prefer paper tickets while others prefer electronic ones. While I can't speak for everyone I can tell you why I prefer paper boarding passes: They are faster when going through TSA. When you spend as much time at an airport as I do, you start to notice that the people who slow down the security line are those trying to pull up their electronic tickets on their phones. The rest of us are stuck waiting behind them and even though we are not that much slower, it sure feels like it.

What is even worse is when a family tries to go through security and all of the tickets are on Dad or Mom's phone. You might as well just lie down and take a nap.

There is a secret if you insist on keeping your boarding pass on your phone. When you initially load the boarding pass onto your phone, look at it and take a screen shot being sure to capture the 2-dimensional bard code. Then you don't have to worry about having a fast network connection or where to pull up your boarding pass. Just bring up the screen shot and you will get through security without delay.

The second reason I prefer a paper boarding pass over using my phone is that the ticket readers take longer with a phone than with a piece of paper. Last night I boarded my flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake and my paper ticket scanned two to three times faster than Alex's who used his phone.

Now the detractors of paper tickets tout that they are not wasting paper by printing a ticket and they have a point. If saving paper is high on your list of priorities, then use the screenshot trick. As for me, I look for other ways of saving paper. Two pieces of paper a week is not that much. Also, paper does grow on trees.