The Highs and Lows of Air Travel

The Highs and Lows of Air Travel.

September 20, 2024

We leave for Montreal tomorrow so I thought it would be a good idea to check in for our flights 24 hours before. It may be a good idea, but the execution of those good ideas doesn’t always work out!

Being the adept computer user that I am, I have scanned all the documents we need (passports in particular) and uploaded them to United’s website. So, I should be able to check in and print boarding passes, right? You know the answer to that question is a resounding NO.

First I tried United’s suggestion of how easy it is to check in using their app on my phone. Nope, not easy. Didn’t work. Tried the app on Randy’s phone. Nope, not easy. Didn't work. So, the computer it is.

Went swimmingly. At first. Little green boxes everywhere telling me I had all my ducks, uh, documents, in a row. Everything was done, entered, ready to be printed. So, I printed out (Aside: you will find, if you don’t already know this about me, that I write a lot of “Aside” comments. This is the first for this trip: as much as I love and use computers, I don’t trust them. At all. Ever. Hence the printed boarding passes!) our boarding passes. Except, despite the little green comments that everything was done and dusted, Randy’s boarding passes printed, then a note saying that MY boarding pass would not be printed because I had not scanned in my passport.

Grrrrr. Back to United’s website, and my entry has a little green box saying, “All documents done.” I tried to access where I would put my passport information, but it wouldn’t let me. Tried calling two different United telephone numbers, both busy. I could feel my blood pressure rising. Grrrrr. Too late to make this story short, but after muttering several cuss words, and restarting the website, I started with the check-in process again, and this time, it worked. Don’t know what the glitch was in United’s website but all I cared about was having a PRINTED boarding pass.

I’m not even going to try to use the boarding pass on my phone.