Originally Posted by
dval44
just print it
Fair point. I’m a hopeless millennial. I don’t own a printer. I never check a bag. I rely on apps for banking, flying, trading stocks, etc. without thinking twice. It’s excellent practical advice, but part of me is like what’s the point of using the app if I still have to go the kiosks and wait in line. Also, if you ever can’t bring up your bp, you can just go to the gate agent or charge your phone, so it’s usually not a huge risk IMO.
Okay, but who said you had to own a printer to hold a paper BP? At every airport I've ever been to, you can either get paper BPs at the kiosks, or have an agent print them for you, for your entire journey that day. Since your origin was outside of the US, I'm not sure if there were any UA kiosks, but you'd definitely be able to have an agent print a set of BPs for you.
Personally, I do own a printer and prefer to have paper BPs in hand when I arrive at the airport, so that just in case the UA servers crash, my phone dies, my prepaid SIM card runs out of data in a foreign country and there's no Wi-Fi, or any number of other reasons I wouldn't be able to pull up the mobile BP, I at least have evidence that I should be allowed past security. Heck, I'm a fellow millennial who works in software, and I don't trust software and phones to always work. I was at SJU one time when the power went out and the GAs were boarding the planes by looking at paper BPs and checking names off on paper. When traveling, I do not always have access to a printer, so in that case, I will always visit the kiosk or an agent at the beginning of my journey to get paper BPs. But in any case, I've never felt comfortable only having my BPs on a device that can crash, run out of batteries, freeze up at just the wrong time, etc.