Online checkin is an oxymoron; invented by airlines to save themselves some money. So now they are finding the downsides - tough.
To be honest, flyingfemme, the airline doesn't care one iota about the downsides!
It is people like me that work with our customers who find the downside, or the customers themselves - like the woman whose son had been knocked off his motorcycle and was in the Intensive Care Unit in a hospital near Stuttgart! She was waitlisted for my flight because her inbound flight misconnected and didn't travel because, in theory, our flight was full.
The only thing was, our flight departed with four empty seats because four On Line Check In pax failed to show at the airport!
So, you see, British Airways doesn't care - it will still get the revenue from those seats. The woman in question didn't care because she never knew the flight had empty seats (but she might never have got to see her son alive!)
The only person who cares is me, because I still care about people! Why should I be made to suffer when I didn't make the decisions to encourage On Line Check In (indeed, I can't see any need for it beyond a seat reservation function!) Like you, I was always of the opinion that checking in was a declaration that you were at the airport and ready to fly!
SIGH - maybe I do belong in the past when airline people behaved like
gentlemen and words like "money" and "profit" were never talked about in decent society! Customers also used to care about their fellow travellers too!
To be perfectly honest, sometimes when I read the responses on Pprune, Flyertalk and other Bulletin Boards, I feel very depressed at the general selfishness of people and the "couldn't care less" attitude we're developing.
I am beginning to feel as if I do belong to a previous age (thanks for the reminder WHBM) and people are just waiting for me to shuffle off and await my day of reckoning with the Great Architect of the Universe!