“A ny advise for those of us who like to use digital boarding passes?” is what NRTBound — who is a reader of The Gate — asked in the Comments section of this article called Stupid Tip of the Day: Hang On to Your Boarding Pass — Until… “Should we get paper passes as well even if we don’t plan on using them?”
The article stressed the importance of saving your paper boarding pass in case there is a discrepancy pertaining to how your frequent flier loyalty program account was — or was not — credited with miles which you should have earned after completing flights as a passenger during a trip.
Follow Up: Saving Digital Boarding Passes
My advice is to indeed obtain paper boarding passes as well even if you do not plan on using them; but because I never use digital boarding passes, I did not know the complete answer to that question — so I thought I would do some research.
According to this article pertaining to four problems using a mobile boarding pass which have been solved, the three most popular ways to get and store a mobile boarding pass are as follows:
- Have it emailed to you. Tip: Use an email address that you have inbox access to on your device.
- Use an airline app. Tip: The app would be by the same company as the flights you’re taking.
- Use a universal app. Tip: These apps are made to store important information.
Other Recommendations
Adam Dachis of Lifehacker recommends that you take a screen shot of your mobile boarding pass when traveling, which is a good idea…
…but what I personally like to do with many digital documents is first save them in Portable Document Format — or .pdf — and then use a mobile software application program to store it on my portable electronic device. There are plenty of mobile software application programs — such as Adobe Acrobat Reader for portable electronic devices — which are available to download free of charge and keep your documents organized. By saving different types of documents as .pdf files, I have them all in one place — regardless of what were their original file formats.
Summary
According to this article written by Peter Greenberg, “more and more airlines are letting you save your boarding pass on a third-party app. This means no need to search through emails or download those airline apps.”
Greenberg also gave some pointers on which mobile software application programs work on which portable electronic devices for specific airlines; but he also wrote that “new technology is always prone to glitches, which is why I still like to keep a physical paper trail. My advice: always print out a copy of your boarding pass, just as a backup.”
That is my advice as well — but of course, if you have any suggestions or recommendations to impart as well, please share it in the Comments section below.
Thank you in advance.
Photograph ©2013 by Brian Cohen.
