What's the point of online check in?

[lastminpanic23]

It's been a while since dh and I have been abroad so we are bickering over this. He says we should check in online. I said it's pointless when we have bags to drop off for the hold as you still need to queue up to check those in and might as well do it all at once. We also don't have a printer so wouldn't be able to print off our own boarding passes anyway.

I understand it makes it quicker for people who just have hand luggage and can therefore bypass the check in desk but what's the point in doing it if you have suitcases?

@Precipice

When I wasn't able to print last time (because Ryanair only lets you check in 24h before if you don't book priority) and had to use my phone, I was able to get into security with the QR code, but it wouldn't scan at the gate. They just had to type in the number and look me up on the passenger list.

What do you mean 'Ryanair only lets you check in 24 hour before if you don't book priority'? Do you mean it has to be more than 24 hours - as we never have priority and always check in around a week before .

Admittedly I haven't flown since 1999 so things are very different now but......I always assumed check in was so the airline knows you are actually there in the airport waiting to catch your plane.
If you check in online how do they know if you are there or haven't turned up?
How would they know whether to put out a "Could Mrs Smith please make her way to Gate 14" message if they don't know if you have accidentally wandered to Gate 4 or you're stuck in traffic on the M4?.
Basically.....I don't get it 😂

It's absolutely pointless!!!

You can check in online 24 hours before then when you're coming home you have to check in at the bloody airport!! What a joke

You can check in online when you're coming home too, why do you think you can't? 🤨 In fact you can sometimes check in for your return flight before you leave home - the 24hr rule is not for every airline, every airport.
And plenty of people have said the reasons why, so it's not pointless!

@JimPanzee because 9 times out of 10 when you're on holiday you don't have a printer so can't print out your boarding passes for the way home! It's such a stupid system

It could have been, yes. They opened the check in desks an hour earlier because of that.

You don't need paper boarding passes. Just show them on your phone screen. No need to faff around trying to find a printer.

Last time I went with jet2 I still had to queue and check in bags and they gave us printed boarding passes even though they were on my phone. Glasgow didn't have automatic drop off. But this was Feb 2023 so they may do now.

@taxguru never been allowed that before. It's such a faff as well, it's just absolutely pointless

My mistake. It's not about priority, but about booking a specific seat. If you don't pay for specific seat reservation, your check-in window opens 24 hours before the flight. I have a flight coming up soon and can't check in yet.

Just go straight to bag drop, you don’t need to do anything else

To add for anyone who may not know - you can add boarding passes to your "wallet" on your phone so you don't need Internet connection to access them.

If you check in online how do they know if you are there or haven't turned up?

Putting it bluntly if you haven’t checked in hold baggage they have your money anyway and they don’t really care.

The staff will close the gate at the advertised time, close the aircraft doors at much the same point and off the flight goes whether you’ve made it or not.

For those worried about the consequences of that to aircraft loading usually the pilots get the final confirmation of passenger numbers and final weights/trim detailed passed from the company to them by radio or data link during the taxi out.

@NeedSomeAnswersPlease
"....never been allowed that before. It's such a faff as well, it's just absolutely pointless"

So despite what lots of people on this thread are saying, and the normal practice of most airlines (I won't say all, as don't know every airline) you think it's pointless because you've never been "allowed" to use a perfectly normal way of boarding? Why are you so special I wonder? 🤔

If you check in online how do they know if you are there or haven't turned up?

They only care if you've got checked in baggage as they then have to find and remove the baggage if you don't turn up at the gate. If you've not checked in baggage, they're not remotely interested that you're not there. They won't be doing last minute Tannoy announcements or holding the plane waiting for you. If you miss it, you lose your money, no skin off their nose whether you're there or not. All they care about is the delay caused by getting your checked in baggage off the plane. If you're not there, you won't have checked in your baggage. (Except in cases where certain airlines allow you to check in baggage the day before).

We've always been told they have to be printed. Just don't see the point in it when you have to have a printed boarding pass on the way home and most return airports don't have a bag drop

How do you mean "never been allowed"? Who hasn't "allowed" you?

The last time we flew was in 2019, we had the front row seats so could see people boarding, even back then, I'd say well over half the passengers were showing their boarding passes to the stewards on their phones. We'd been showing them on our phones throughout 2018 and 2019 with numerous airlines/numerous airports with no problems at all.

I download them onto my phone and print them. I was with a colleague who's phone died just as he was about to board. Cue panic.

Always been told we have to print them 🤷🏻‍♀️ you're not better than anyone else

I do in case the battery dies, etc. Plus it often takes people ages to open the app, find the boarding passes, scan the code from their phone and a piece of paper is quicker.

I know several cabin crew who say they always prefer people to have their boarding passes on their phones. People never lose their phones but they often lose their paper passes 😆
We have ours in our iPhone wallets, so easy enough to find. We all download all the passes, so at least if one phone dies suddenly there's two or three others in the party to rely on.

It can also take aged for people to faff about looking for paper boarding passes, checking their pockets, their bag, etc.

Paper boarding passes can also be lost or damaged (accidentally torn, get wet etc).

But if you checked in online and they think you are on the plane wouldn't that confuse things security wise?
Surely you still have to show your passport and have hand luggage scanned through security. Is that not part of "check in"?
As I said it's a quarter of a century since I flew so it's all 🤷 to me 😂

Exactly, we all had each other's boarding passes on our phones, so if one person lost their phone or their battery died, they could use their boarding pass on another phone.

When my son travels alone, he carries one of those small spare battery packs to plug into his phone in case it runs out of power.

Back in the day when we printed boarding passes (maybe 7+ years ago), I used to print two copies of everyone's. I'd carry one full set and OH would carry the other full set. So even with paper, we had our own "Plan B".

My brother has been cabin crew for years and prefers paper 🤷🏻‍♀️ just don't think this is the moral win a lot of you seem to think it is 😂