fumje

I didn't intend for that to be taken as if and only if. They definitely get overly generous with compensation when you have status, bought an expensive fare -- or in seemingly random other circumstances as well.

SJC Road Warrior

I concur (and am frequently ridiculed when traveling with my family for stopping and getting a paper copy). But here's the funny part; flying last month from Nice to Madrid my boarding pass refused to scan, but my mobile pass did! Who would believe! Had I not had it, I could already see I would have been pulled aside and "dealt with" as a packed flight filled - probably forcing me to check my carry-on bag. So it IS really good to have both at hand!

davidgree1

Always screenshot b.p.

gbisaga

I was flying home from Bangalore, India. They don't even let you in the airport building unless you can show them a boarding pass. I was having a hard time getting any data connectivity outside the building, either WiFi or SIM card. I thought I wasn't going to be able to get home. Now I print boarding passes.

FastEddie

Domestic - Mobile boarding pass only - I never print paper. I have had my phone brick while standing in line to board and the GA just asks for my drivers license and printed my BP on the spot.
International - Mobile boarding pass is primary and paper is my secondary.

This strategy hasn't failed me.........yet.

MiscMel70

I'm seeing a lot of comments mentioning phones running out of juice. That still happens to folks? I have 1 of those little phone power packs in my backpack at all times. This exact boarding pass scenario has happened to me in the past so now I too screenshot my boarding pass as well as place it in the wallet (yes redundancy redundancy). I haven't had a dead cell phone in years because I have the backup power pack.

But I'm a road warrior....I even have a portable power pack for my laptop...(thanks to being burned by American Airlines old USAir 321's that don't have power!)

John Darcy

You can't have your phone run out of juice if you manage your phone properly (but that's obviously a debate outside this thread).

Mr.Nuke

There was a 3rd option in between here too. I realize I'm saying this with the benefit of hindsight and not being blindsided in the moment, but I probably would've stepped aside for a minute or two to see if I could get through to someone on the 800 number right away or not. Where the middle ground comes in is that I'd sure has heck be on the phone all the way up to the point I had human contact with an agent/rep at the airport. At that point you've essentially put yourself in two waiting lines; and I'm doubting the call wait would've been significant. I've had very good luck over the phone in situations where I needed to talk to someone while at the airport including being rebooked on an alternate flight by the time the second person in a 70 person physical line had been.

TheFlyingBrick

Over the last 9 years I have had 3 iPhones literally die.

One from unfortunately been dropped, smashing the screen and rendering the keyboard completely inoperable.

Two died by shutting down mid-use while fully charged and were never able to be resuscitated.

Yes, I always carry multiple chargers and a battery pack, and now a 2nd phone!

And yes I *always* make sure that I am carry a pepper BP, no matter where in the world my flight is.

HNLbasedFlyer

I think the thread title phrases it better - removed. United removed your boarding pass for the flight for which you were no longer checked in.

The good news, it was only a 1 hour 50 minute inconvenience - and steps to avoid this are easy:

1) Check in on the app.
2) Click - email my boarding pass as the last step during mobile check in

You will still have the mobile boarding pass. You will also have an electronic backup that can only be deleted by you.

jsloan

Answered upthread, but it's a long thread: running out of battery power is only one possibility. I've had my phone turn itself off, with no warning, and refuse to respond for about ten minutes, before finally reacting to the power button and powering up fine. The battery level was over 60% and it worked normally afterwards.

The moral of the story is, I see very little upside to the mobile boarding passes, and an awful lot of downside.

STS-134

There's little downside to using mobile passes. They're incredibly convenient, since you typically are on your phone while you are near the gate. What has very little upside and an awful lot of downside is failing to print a paper BP, even when you plan to use a mobile BP. Like with anything else, it's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

threeoh

Yes, that is a bad policy, and that is the point of this thread. There should not be a requirement that your reservation be in sync to get through TSA, especially if it was in sync when you got in the TSA line and you did not initiate any changes.

Whichever software engineer wrote the app thought to themselves "passenger shouldn't be able to board with an out-of-sync reservation, we'll make the app not display anything". That was a bad programming decision, and cost OP the connection.

It could instead, for example, display the last valid BP and also an out-of-sync warning saying "your reservation is out of sync, please see an agent to fix your reservation." This would be more analogous to how paper BPs work, where you generally get to keep the old BP until you are handed a new one. It is bad UX to have a BP disappear without warning.

And to everyone who is saying "your phone could run out of juice!": If that had happened, OP wouldn't be blaming United. OP would say "hey my phone ran out of juice! My bad, should have charged my phone or printed a BP". In point of fact, OP's phone did not fail -- United has a piece of software that behaves poorly and in a particularly unexpected and surprising way.

You can give advice about flying defensively but don't lose sight of the fact that it's United's decisions -- bad decisions -- that led to the problem.

mozilla

Yes, the gate scanner would prevent the pax from boarding in that scenario anyway, so the app doesn't need to make that call.

HNLbasedFlyer

Software engineers at airlines just don't take it upon themselves to make those decisions on their own.

It is either - the way it works is UA's policy, a bug, or consequences of instructing the app to only display valid boarding passes.

Certainly, UA knows about this by the response by Customer Care. I lean on it is UA's policy to only display valid boarding passes within the app and whether that is bad policy or not is up for debate - they may have their reasons, for instance, don't let an invalid boarding make it all the way to scanner, reject it, tell passenger to go back to gate agent and sort it out - all while the boarding process has started.