Skip the mobile boarding passes during crowded travel times

Flying during a busy time and love the convenience of mobile boarding passes?

Unless you want to risk starting over at the end of a very long line, consider going the old-fashioned route of 2009 and carry a paper boarding pass with you to the airport and through security.

Not every screening line has an electronic reader to scan and identify your boarding pass from your mobile device.

If you aren’t in the right line, you’ll have to jump over to another line to get scanned. And do you really want to be the one gumming up the system on the heaviest travel days?

Electronic readers break and have technical difficulties.

Sometimes machines break, and if you have a paper boarding pass, you don’t have to worry about what to do if the machine doesn’t work.

Internet connections fail.

Yes, sometimes it is hard to connect to the internet at the airport. And the internet is where your mobile boarding pass is stored. No internet = no boarding pass. Difficulty connecting = longer wait time. Again, do you really want to be that person in line making everyone wait? I know I don’t.

Believe me, I love using a mobile boarding pass at every opportunity I get.

But during super busy travel times, when the crowds are big and patience is short and you really don’t want mistakes to happen, it really is best to use a paper boarding pass and eliminate one more potential holdup.