Delta's Mobile Boarding Pass

I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about my experience with Delta's Mobile Boarding Pass since it was less than perfect. My first time using the mobile boarding pass was an accident. When I checked into my flight back from Sydney Australia, and asked for my final destination, I told the check-in agent that it was Los Angeles (LAX) because I booked the flights separately. Even though I booked the flights separately I could have said my final destination was Tampa and I would have gotten all of my boarding passes at once.

After going through customs when I got to Los Angeles, I had to recheck my luggage for an LAX to Atlanta (ATL) flight. I did not have a printed boarding pass, but the person responsible for checking the luggage wanted to see one before taking my luggage. I didn't have it. Almost instantly, I thought of the mobile boarding pass, so I  fired up the Fly Delta app on my Android phone, and after a small wait with the horrible cell phone signal (more on that later), I was able to check-in and get a mobile version of my boarding pass. I gave my phone to the luggage person and was able to get my luggage checked.

After checking my luggage, I had to go through another customs screening area that required me to have my boarding pass. Here is where the less than perfection begins. While I was online toying with other applications, my boarding pass was no longer easily available since it was no longer an active application on my phone. I had to relaunch the application. Well, this time when I went to recall the app, I had no cell phone signal since I was a few levels below ground in the LAX customs check-in area. Without a boarding pass, and approaching security, I nervously kept waving the phone until I got a signal. After a few minutes wait, I finally got an adequate signal and was able to recall my boarding pass. At the security checkpoint, I put my phone under the scanner and the scanner confirmed my mobile boarding pass. All is good.

With a three hour wait until my flight to ATL, I spent a lot of time on my phone. So much time in fact, my battery was getting low. Without a battery charge area around, I started to get worried that my mobile boarding pass wouldn't be available because the battery was going to die on my phone. So at that point, I decided to turn my phone off not thinking about when they board, I was going to have to reboot my phone, which takes several minutes, relaunch the app, and bring up the mobile boarding pass again. So again, as we are boarding the plane, I'm impatiently waiting for my phone to boot so I can launch the app to recall my boarding pass. With another weak signal in the airport, it took several minutes to load the mobile boarding pass. I was able to load it, scan it, and gain access to the plane. So, I guess this is a good opportunity to lay out some tips with the mobile boarding pass:

1. Make sure you have enough battery power.
2. Make sure you have a strong enough data signal.
3. Don't drain your battery if you are set on using the mobile boarding pass.

I probably won't continue to use it because I won't want to have to worry about these three tips.