common check-in is a good idea, but not with a manual check-system
Common check-in is impossible with a manual system. Unless you give each agent 10 manifests, 10 sets of boarding cards, etc etc. Recipe for disaster if you ask me!
I dont think that the lines of pax waiting to check-in would get any shorter by using a computer, the amount of pax waiting in line is due to the masive operation that ryanair have at Stansted.
But surely if you have agents doing nothing, then you have a waisted resource! You could effectively move half of the passengers in the queue to someone who has checked-in their flight or nearly so and half the queue length!
Remember Ryanair only has 2 agent on each flight most airlines have 3 agents the check in's are open about the same time and Ryanair's aircraft seat more pax as lets say Easyjet who sometimes pull over the pax from another flight.
Easyjet only use the equivillant of 1 agent per flight and their queues are never as bad as Ryanair's. I take on board what you say about the reduced capacity of EZY aircraft but we are only talking 33 passengers. (737-800 189Y vs A319 156Y)
If you break down the check-in process and you follow ALL of the DFT requirements for manual check-in, then the process IS much longer.
COMPUTERISED CHECK-IN (free seating)
1) Find passenger
2) Check-in
3) Enter number of bags
MANUAL CHECK-IN (free seating)
1) Find passenger.
2) Write sequence nuber, gender, and number of bags on manifest.
3) Write seq number on bag tag.
4) Attach baggage sticker to bingo sheet.
5) write surname/initial on boarding card.
My view is that computerised check-in should be mandatory during normal operations, simply because I think it cuts down on the number of mistakes and makes AAA more reliable. Just out of interest, how do the guys at Ryanair get the info from the manifest at check-in to the gate staff in order to locate missing passenger details??