Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Airplane Tickets Printed or on Your Phone

I do a lot of travel for my job and am coming up on having flown over 2 Million miles. When it comes time to print out a ticket for a flight there are 2 options. The first is to actually use an old-fashioned printer and print a paper ticket. The second is to send a QR code to a smartphone and use that to board the plane. One would think it is a no-brainer and the smartphone is the way to go. For the technically savy, I would agree. My preference is to print a paper ticket though.

Yes I know that my seat may be updated between the time I check in and when I actually board my flight. If I used the airline's app, the seat is automatically changed and I don't have to pay attention to the monitors in the terminal. I also don't have to worry about losing my ticket. As I have said, the smartphone ticket seems to be the way to go.

The problem is that smartphones slow the boarding of the plane. I'm not sure how so many people can have such problems getting the ticket scanner to read a phone screen but it happens. I have waited for several minutes behind passengers who don't know you need to turn up the brightness so the QR code can be read properly. I have also seen countless travelers not able to find their ticket on the phone. Then of course there is the dreaded screen lock. You have your ticket ready to scan only to have the screensaver kick in and blank out the screen as you go to scan it. Ultimately I have found that pulling out a paper ticket speeds things up and gets me onto the plane quicker.

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