2024-10-08 07:39:18
Tickets and mobile boarding passes
Battery empty: Is the cell phone ticket still valid?
Updated on October 7, 2024 – 2:46 p.mReading time: 3 min.
Whether by plane or train: more and more people are booking their trips using smartphone apps. But what if the battery suddenly runs out or the cell phone fails?
More and more travelers are saving their tickets and boarding passes on their smartphones instead of getting them from machines or counters or printing them out at home. More than 40 million mobile phone tickets were sold via Deutsche Bahn’s app – the so-called DB Navigator – in 2021, and over 400,000 people use the app every day, the company announces this on its website.
With the trend towards smartphone tickets, customers are not only doing the company a favor, which saves money on counter staff and machines. Digital tickets are also more environmentally friendly.
Nevertheless, many travelers do not want to do without the good old paper ticket for safety reasons. The background is usually a certain distrust of technology. Many are unsure what to do when there is a problem. The fear of an empty battery certainly also plays a role. After all, especially on long journeys, there is no guarantee that the battery will last until the end. If the conductor comes at just that moment, you’ll look stupid, right?
In fact, according to the Local Transport Arbitration Board, the customer is solely responsible for ensuring that he or she can present a valid ticket – regardless of whether it is on paper or on a smartphone.
Anyone who buys a cell phone ticket should therefore make sure when boarding that the battery is charged and that the ticket can be accessed even if the internet connection is weak. It is therefore best to download the ticket before the journey so that it is available offline.
If it happens that your cell phone dies before the ticket check or your ticket cannot be accessed for other reasons, you can act as follows. The general rule is: If you can’t show a valid ticket, you’re driving black. Therefore, a subsequent fare survey will be created, according to Deutsche Bahn.
This means that the passenger must purchase a valid ticket for his journey elsewhere, for example from a ticket machine. If you subsequently present a valid ticket, the penalty can usually be reduced to a small processing fee. To do this, the customer usually has to present their mobile phone ticket or a booking confirmation within a certain period of time. At Deutsche Bahn, for example, it is 14 days; The processing fee there is seven euros.
There are exceptions, for example, in Düsseldorf, where if necessary the control staff can also check whether a ticket has been purchased or not using the ID card or debit card, reports Deutschlandfunk.
On most flights, passengers can check in independently online and print their boarding pass at home or save it on their mobile phone. If you don’t have any luggage to check in, you can save yourself a trip to the counter and may be able to go straight to the terminal.
If your smartphone suddenly fails, it’s far from a tragedy. Most airlines keep passenger lists anyway. If you can identify yourself at the counter, you can usually get a new boarding pass without any problems.
Of course, this takes a little more time, so you should always get to the airport early, even if check-in has actually already been completed. Some budget airlines such as Ryanair also charge a fee for reprinting boarding passes.
Most trains have power sockets under the seats. You can charge your mobile phone there – provided you have a charging cable with you. With a charged power bank in their luggage, travelers don’t have to worry about their cell phone suddenly failing, even without a power outlet. But even without such an additional battery, there are a number of tricks you can use to counteract a dwindling battery.
Almost all devices offer an energy saving mode. This usually switches on automatically as soon as the energy level falls below a certain limit. At the beginning of a long journey, the user can also activate the mode manually and thus slow down particularly energy-hungry apps and applications right from the start.