When you book a flight online for a round trip, what's first thing to do when you arrive at the airport? Do you have to print out a boarding pass?

When you book a flight online for a round trip, what's first thing to do when you arrive at the airport? Do you have to print out a boarding pass?

Much better to print them out BEFORE you go to the airport.

If you wait until you get to the airport then you may find that their self-check-in facilities are not working so you can't print out the pass. Or sometimes there's an immense queue to use those machines.

Even when you can get the passes emailed to your phone and then loaded onto a phone pass wallet app, it's still best to print out the boarding passes before you arrive at the airport just as a back up measure.

You will receive a fight confirmation number when you book the flight, and you can either check in online and receive a boarding pass that you can print out 24 hours or less before your flight, or you can print it out at the airport using that confirmation number.

The first thing that I do is park my car.
You have to have a boarding pass to get through security and get on the plane. You can print it at home, check in online and have it on your smartphone, print it at a kiosk in the lobby (if the airline has them), or wait in line and check in with an agent and have them hand you the boarding pass.
If you have never flown before, don't do either of the first two, unless you are flying a budget airline that charges you to check in at the airport or if you are flying Southwest (they don't assign seats and the order you board is based off of when you check in--even then, you can reprint the boarding pass at the airport). This is especially true if you are checking bags.

I usually have a dump. There's a lot of standing around and drinking coffee to come.

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