Online check in times
 

Some airlines will open online checkin for a flight 2 weeks or even a month in advance, making it much more likely a passenger will have access to internet and printer.
Other airlines don't allow online checkin until 24 or 30 hours in advance.
I presume that on cost grounds an airline prefers passengers checkin online rather than at an airport desk which would incur additional human involvement and monetary cost

I accept that the USA might have Govt imposed rules around this, but looking purely at travel within the EU, why do some airlines have such a short time window for online checkin ? Is it purely down to legacy IT infrastructure that can't cope, or is there another reason behind this ?

A very good question. I often have a situation where I'm away for only 3 or 4 days but do not have easy access to a PC & printer to check in for the return sector. I certainly would be interested in knowing (from a good airline source) the reason(s) why many stick to the 23, 24 and 30 hour rule (depending on the airline).

Online check in times
 

Surely the idea of "check-in" is to show that you have turned up at the airport and will make the flight?
What's to say something won't happen (transport, medical etc) between checking in 24hrs+ before a flight and getting yourself to the airport?

The only reason that comes to mind is the cost of check in luggage. Usually higher at the desk than online. Some airlines (you know who you are) will also charge heavily for printing your boarding pass.

Systems will differ between the LCC model - basically point to point and 'legacy' or network airlines.

The DCS (Departure Control Systems) on network airlines are much more complex than LCCs. These will manage (or mis-manage) on-line and interline connections (pax and luggage). Itineraries can be up to (I think) 12 or 14 sectors before manual intervention is required (depends on the airline). It is because of these complexities that a 24 hour period (of checkin for the first flight) is in effect.

International conventions (Warsaw and now Montreal) require all passengers to have both a 'ticket / baggage check' and a boarding card. The LCCs would probably dispense with the boarding card if they could.

I think you are jumping to the wrong conclusions. In fact certain low cost airlines encourage pax to check in for both their outward and return sectors at the same time, which is why they charge excessive penalties to those who don't. My question is with the legacy carriers who tend to insist on a maximum of 24 hrs or so.

sapperkenno: you are way behind the times and technology has moved forward. I can tell you that in the days when pax had no other option than to check in at the airport there were still many instances of them not showing up at the gate.

Edit: written before I saw ExXB's post.

Back in the day, before the internet, everybody had to check-in at the airport. The purpose was to confirm that the ticket holder had actually turned up on time, and their baggage got processed. Nowadays, it's not really a check-in; for some airlines it's a thinly veiled excuse to get the punter to have the hassle of printing a ticket (and the cost), and little else.

However, the european Denied Boarding regs do make check-in an important key stage as to whether compensation is due or not in the event of delay/cancellation. The way I read it is that if I've checked in 2 weeks in advance, and the flight is majorly delayed/cancelled, I can legitimately claim compensation, even if I never turn up at the airport.

This is why I'm surprised there is not some kind of process in place which confirms that online check in passengers actually intended to fly on delayed or canx flights. There must be hundreds of cases where someone has checked in online then at the last minute decided not to bother, or has had multiple flights booked and gone on a different one instead, but remained checked in on another, only for them to then claim compensation for a delayed or canx flight they never even wanted to go on.

It also surprises me that airlines open themselves up to this kind of abuse by offering online checked in so far in advance. The time limit is dictated to by how far in advance the DCS has the flight details. In my experience, the passenger lists and configuration are only loaded into the airline system around 30 hours before. This gives ground staff time to allocate seats in advance for families and premium passengers (some airlines do that), block off any seats for operational reasons and double check the correct configs have been set up and adjust them as required before the check in opens to the public and it becomes a free for all.

Anecdotal perhaps, but in my experience those with short online check-in times usually allow automated check-in/B-P printing at the airport (e.g. Flybe), whereas those with longer online checkin time (EJ) do not.

I only fly nowadays to go on hols : generally package. For trip next month Thomson have invited me to check in on line,(14 days in advance) print boarding cards (booked seats) & use bag drop. I hope this will be an improvement over the queues of numpties I generally get behind. I hope so..............but I bet it's not.:bored:

Can a pax check-in online prior to paying for the flight? I didn't think so.
So someone is going to pay for several flights, check in online and then not turn up (no show). Doesn't sound profitable to me.

The last couple of times I tried to check in on-line, United decided it couldn't print me a boarding pass anyway because it wanted someone to have sight of my travel documents. So I ended up in the queue anyway. I always prefer to get the boarding pass at the airport anyway, less chance of losing it. I know with some airlines it's possible to do the whole check-in on-line and then get the passes from a machine at the airport, then just drop the bags.

I think part of it is that the whole list of questions about "did you pack it yourself" etc are part of the on-line process and so don't need to be asked at the desk, saving some time.

It gives the business traveller flexibility on LCCs that one used to have from a full Y or C ticket. On high frequency routes of course. I knew a guy who did exactly this on squeezy LGW-AMS. He'd book and pay for two or three flights and on the day would take the flight that suited his needs. It was cheaper than a fully flexible ticket on the network airlines. This was before squeezy's flexible prices.

ExXB
Thanks for that explanation, does make sense in those circumstances.

I know many people who used to buy multiple tickets for the same journey when <10€ fares really were readily available, and in the airports I frequent, it was common to hear Ryanair gate staff calling for a final few passengers who never showed up. Those flights were never late taking off (unless for other reasons) but many could have had their doors closed as much as 15 minutes earlier if the phantom checked-in passengers had not been on the list.

What intrigues me about advance check-in is the declaration that nobody has interefered with one's luggage when chances are the suitcase hasn't even been dragged out of its habitual wardrobe or attic resting place. :suspect:

I have also pondered on this subject and can only conclude that - it's about money and publicity. If advanced check-in did not help them to save or make money - it wouldnot be done.

As to claiming for delayed flights you were not on, you do still have to present your boarding pass (bar code) and that says who actually turned up at the airport. Unless, I'm missing something?

If there were problems with non-flying passengers claiming R261 compensation then the airlines would have brought this to the Commission and Parliament's attention during the most recent review of the regulation.

Seeing as they didn't, I don't suppose it's a problem. At least yet :hmm:

I assumed that when your boarding card is scanned at security, it advises the airline that you have actually arrived at the airport and "checked in" - ie the on-line is actually printing your ticket, and the security area is the new "check-in" if you see what I mean.

PaxBoy

The problem is someone could just print a boarding card at home and not go to the airport, it would still showed checked in, just like someone who went to the terminal. There is no mandatory reprinting of online boarding cards anywhere that I've ever seen.

There isn't any way for them to know if you were at the airport or not, unless the airline made some kind of note or offloaded anyone who didn't physically make themselves known to an agent when a flight was disrupted. As far as I'm aware this doesn't happen as standard. The only time it would is if 1 flight was cancelled and the passengers were manually rebooked to another service. The PNR would show the changes and thus anyone who didn't show up to be rebooked would not have been at the airport, so wouldn't be able to claim.

When the airline sorts out claims they could clearly see who is entitled to what. Even if someone booked a flight on another carrier or another mode of transport and didn't contact airline staff, they should be entitled as they clearly intended to travel, but they took it upon themselves to re-route and could provide that information to the airline in order to claim,.

Someone who did neither and had no proof that they re-routed themselves could be looked at with suspicion as to whether they even wanted to travel in the end but then I do wonder how such a case would stand up in court.

MidlandDeltic

This kind of thing is being rolled out at some airports hereIt is probably in place at a few places world wide already. Certainly LHR T2 will make use of it and I think T5 does. It is used so boarding agents can see who actually passed through security. At -15 (or whatever the cut off is) anyone who is showing as not cleared security can be offloaded without delaying the flight. Anyone who is through and not yet boarded would show as such, and the usual announcements and checking seats could take place. Once a flight is gone the data is all deleted though. All It shows is, from what I've been told, Sequence Numbers, Names, Time they passed security, where they passed and what the last information the passenger had was. By that I mean, on the little screen above the boarding card scanner at the checkpoint, it would show something like "Check screen for gate" or "Go to Gate 123" for example.

Not really, just replace "at the airport" with "at the gate". Every time I have flown as a passenger on either a legacy outfit or a LCC, with or without checked baggage my boarding card/scrappy piece of paper has been scanned, or my name ticked off a list at the gate before heading either into the fenced off pen :uhoh: or off down the jetty :).......

Anyone not recorded as going through the gate/jetty head is, I suspect, going to have a tough time claiming they were on a flight and therefore entitled to compensation, regardless of how they checked in......

MidlandDeltic

Not at many places, though the card will at least get looked at to confirm your entitlement to proceed towards airside, nothing more. Since T5 was mentioned I'll be (overly) pedantic and mention that at that terminal you self scan your card before entering air side, i.e. before joining the lines for screening - (you're literally "locked" out of air side if you scan less than 35 minutes before STD on the grounds that you've left it to late to get through security and get to the gate on time). If you go missing after that "conformance" scan the gate staff have no idea where you are in the process - stuck in a queue waiting to be screened? sleeping? shopping? whatever... That's why the next (mandatory) scan done at the gate is the really important one since it's the only one that proves you are on the flight.