Booking in on line.

[Westlakejawa]

Friend going out to Australia two weeks time has asked me the advatage of booking in online. Dont know who they are flying with but the lady concerned has probably included the kitchen sink amongst her baggage.
I know and use the advantage of hand luggage only,but with cases, is it of any benefit. thanks

[radeng]

You may get a better seat. But it depends on exactly which airline. Mrs radeng flew a Qantas/BA code share to Sindapore today: she couldn't check in on-line on the BA website. Even the BA Exec Club in Munich (where she was yesterday) couldn't help, and despite being there before the check in desk opened this morning, she couldn't get an aisle seat when it did.

Which naturally led to her telephoning from Heathrow, waking me up, so she could bitch at me about it -as if either it was my fault or I could do anything about it!

[farci]

Friend going out to Australia two weeks time has asked me the advatage of booking in online. Dont know who they are flying with but the lady concerned has probably included the kitchen sink amongst her baggage.
I know and use the advantage of hand luggage only,but with cases, is it of any benefit. thanks Having checked baggage or not is unrelated to the benefits of on-line check-in - two different issues. There is a small advantage at the airport where the 'Baggage Drop' queue may be shorter than the 'Check-in' queue.

Aside from that, how airline computers assign seats has always been a mystery to me when I'm jammed three in a row at take off with empty seats either side.

If your friend checks in on-line she may be able to change the seat on-line too but - again - that depends on the airline seating policy. Unless you fly in a premium class or have some imagined loyalty through a frequent flyer programme...

[Skipness One Echo]

Mrs radeng flew a Qantas/BA code share to Sindapore today

Depends on the ticket and carrier. Witht he case of a BA flight number and BA flights then no issue. QF ticket on BA flight or BA flight numer on QF flight or QF flight no on a QF operatered flight then it doesn't work alas.

[HKPAX]

Seat allocation is the main benefit of on-line check-in. Using BA as an example, I am intrigued at how it works. 24 hours before t/o it looks like they do an auto-assignment. This appears to give weight to pax status (e.g. club member).

I changed me and Mrs HKPAX seat allocation to reserve window and aisle seats for the two of us leaving the middle seat empty, i.e. so no-one would choose it given better options. This worked, and in a nearly full plane we had the space between us empty. I wonder if this was allowed by BA's system because we have different family names?

[PAXboy]

radeng so she could bitch at me about it -as if either it was my fault or I could do anything about itYou've been married long enough to know that it WAS your fault - don't try and wriggle out of it. Now, repeat after me: "Yes, Dear. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about that and I shall certainly be writing to the President. No, it's no trouble, I was awake anyway and was wondering how you were getting along, so it's lovely that you rang me."

:p

[peuce]

I've found checking in online of little benefit. Maybe, as others have said, seat selection advantages.

Even when I have no luggage, on the airlines I fly with, I still have to front up to the check in counter to have my boarding pass "verified".... and often replaced with one of theirs.

[Hipennine]

Putting aside the various loco boarding card printing cons, I've found the best strategy on real airlines is to book in online, but not to print the boarding card. I can do that on the phone, and don't pay for the printing, and if I haven't managed to get a satisfactory seat online, it's then open to further negotiation at the check-in desk.

[PAXboy]

Checking In online is, effectively, very little more than the old 'reconfirming your booking'.

It tells the carrier of your intention to travel but they are still going to have to ask you face to face questions, print your luggage labels, weigh your bags and send then through.

The important aspect IS to register your intent to travel.

[ExXB]

Checking In online is, effectively, very little more than the old 'reconfirming your booking'.

It tells the carrier of your intention to travel but they are still going to have to ask you face to face questions, print your luggage labels, weigh your bags and send then through.

The important aspect IS to register your intent to travel.That's if you are checking your bag. When I fly Squeezy or Swiss to and from Geneva, if I don't have checked luggage I have no interaction with a human until I show them my BP and Passport at the gate.

If I do check a bag the process is faster, perhaps only 30 or so seconds, but multiply that by a jumbo load and there are savings here ...

[mixture]

I changed me and Mrs HKPAX seat allocation to reserve window and aisle seats for the two of us leaving the middle seat empty, i.e. so no-one would choose it given better options. This worked, and in a nearly full plane we had the space between us empty. I wonder if this was allowed by BA's system because we have different family names?

I wouldn't rely on it. More likely the flight was not busy and the other passengers doing an online checkin did not want to risk the possibility sitting inbetween two vastly overweight people for X hours.

For example, I've tried the same trick on shorthaul sectors on BA, but it rarely works as cattle class is generally crammed full anyway on given dates/times.

(P.S. Just to make clear, not calling you overweight, just using the term to paint a picture of what others may be thinking when they look at an online checkin screen that has a spare seat inbetween two others)

[mixture]

It tells the carrier of your intention to travel

Yeah, but it doesn't guarantee you won't be taken off the manifest if you turn up late. :)

[PAXboy]

Indeed, mixture, never said otherwise. I was thinking of checked bags, ExXB, as I had a long haul to do that night (last night)!

in this case, seat arrangements 'failed'. I was in VS PE in the 'A' and I saw a man easing down the aisle and knew with a ghastly certainty that he was going to be 'C'.

Obesity was the least of my worries but I won't trouble you now with details of the 12 hours .... :{

[Swedish Steve]

Ttwo weeks ago i flew SAS Domestic from ARN to GOT and back.
Totally paperless (first time for me)
About 12 hours before dep I got a SMS asking me to check in. I checked in over the internet with my phone and received a boarding card picture.
At the gate held my phone over the reader and went on board. No ticket, no boarding pass and no talking to check in or gate staff.
The phone boarding pass also got me through security, where they have the same readers as at the gate.

[Gamik]

I flew Swiss from ATH to ZRH a few months ago. Didn't bother to do online check-in. On check-in at the desk, the missus and me were assigned seats 8 rows apart. When I requested the desk agent to seat us together, she said she couldn't, the flight was full. On board, I discovered that I had been assigned a middle seat in between an elderly couple.

Lesson learnt: always do online check-in.

Not that it helped on the return. Even though I did online checkin as soon as it opened, on boarding found that they'd switched aircrafts and reassigned us new seats at the gate. However, we did end up with bulkhead seats, either by chance or because the software rewarded us for checking-in online.

[davydine]

Flew LGW to GLA and back this week with BA. Had booked through the travel agent my company uses. Checked in online for both flights and could have chosen a different seat but decided to stick with the one I had been allocated. Interestingly, the only seats I could change to were towards the rear of the plane and I could not select any of the seats towarst the front, so I assumed they were already full. When i got on board i found I had row 3 to myself and rows 1, 2 and 4 were all completely empty too!

On a different note I don't recall anyone at Gatwick looking at my photo ID and I am certain that no one at GLA looked at it because it was tucked away in my laptop bag and I didn't have to go hunting for it.... How did they know I was me? I did have my picture taken as I went through security at LGW but would they have had that at GLA for the return flight?

[Globaliser]

On a different note I don't recall anyone at Gatwick looking at my photo ID and I am certain that no one at GLA looked at it because it was tucked away in my laptop bag and I didn't have to go hunting for it.... How did they know I was me? I did have my picture taken as I went through security at LGW but would they have had that at GLA for the return flight?BA doesn't routinely check photo ID on domestic flights, unlike some other airlines.

At LGW, you cleared security into an area where there's a mix of departing international and departing domestic passengers. Some of the departing international passengers are only transiting and have not crossed the immigration border into the UK. Obviously, for immigration purposes, they must remain "outside" the UK, whereas all departing domestic passengers are by definition "inside" the UK for immigration purposes. The photo is taken at security so that when you board your domestic flight, you can be identified as someone who started their journey "inside" the UK for immigration purposes.

I don't know GLA well, but I seem to recall that the domestic departures area is exclusively for domestic passengers, so there's no need for the photo routine. Everyone is already "inside" the UK.

[Skipness One Echo]

I don't know GLA well, but I seem to recall that the domestic departures area is exclusively for domestic passengers, so there's no need for the photo routine. Everyone is already "inside" the UK.

Oddly enough the domestic pier is kept seperate so that once you leave the lounge you can't return. I have never been able to discover why. If your flight is delayed you are stuck out there or if you forget something you need to buy you're screwed. EDI doesn't have the same issue.

[Dawdler]

Another advantage(?) of checking in online is (apart from known seat allocation), If there is a queues at check in, you can go th baggage drop (if you have bags) where the queues are generally shorter.

However it doesn't work at all airports. I flew with Monarch Scheduled and checked in on line both ways. It worked fine in the UK but the return leg was a bit of a fiasco as the check-in clerk would not accept my preprinted boarding cards. She would only check me in in the normal way. I needn't have bothered visiting the Internet Cafe to check in for the flight home.

[Sygyzy]

Oh Dear,

Very good meal with wine this evening and then thought that I'd check the forum before bed.

Was quite excited as to what I'd find on this thread until.....:ugh:

S