Travel Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for road warriors and seasoned travelers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Flying Delta I was able to scan my boarding pass from my phone. Is this possible with Spirit?
Why do I need to print the boarding pass for Spirit? I'm checking-in using my phone, do I still need to look for printer, or can I simply scan the PDF?
This should really align with Spirit wanting to be green, remember when buying ticket they were offering me to pay extra for bio-degradable cups and napkins, so not printing extra paper seems green ...
Delta has an app specifically designed for producing a machine readable boarding code, Spirit does not. Delta has programmed most of its scanners to read that app code, but not all. There are still airports where a paper boarding pass is issued by Delta.
Spirit obviously hasn't upgraded its systems to use machine readable app codes. And so will continue to use paper ones until they do that. They may well be working on it, but it takes time & money.
As for scanning the pdf barcode off your phone, that is determined by the abilities of scanning machine at the airport gate. Not all scanners can successfully read barcodes off phone displays. The same issue occurs using electronic coupons at grocery stores, sometimes the clerk has to manually enter the code number because the laser can't read the phone display. So can you imagine how long it would take to board an aircraft if the gate agents had to manually enter everyone's barcode from their phone ... hence paper boarding passes speed things up.
Spirit is doing it for a reason. They could care less about being green. If you are travelling or at home and don't have access to a printer, that means $10 for them for each ticket sold. In a year that amounts to millions.
