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?

I don't think the number of airports is that tiny tbh. I've traveled extensively over Asia and many don't use digital boarding passes

A few years ago I didn't check in online and just went to the airport. I was bumped out of my Premium Economy seat into Economy and that meant I had to sit away from my family (who had checked in online and had booked adjacent seats). It was one of those planes with an upstairs 'bubble' and so I wasn't even on the same 'floor' as my family for a 9 hour flight! I will never make the same mistake again!

Just back yesterday using Jet2 and there is usually lots of staff at airport to assist - I was clueless first time I had to use bag drop but it really is simple. I have been through Edinburgh and Newcastle recently and it is simple - scan boarding pass, put suitcase on scale then attach label to suitcase. Put on conveyor belt then job done - head to security then go and chill.
Jet2 staff also advised screen shotting the boarding pass in case you don't have WiFi signal and is quicker than waiting for app to open- I did this and it's so easy as you have to show it a few times before you get on the plane. I have also done the twilight drop when I had an early morning flight with Jet2 - was a bit worried it might not make the right plane but it was there safe and sound at the destination the next day and it meant on the morning of the flight we could head straight to security to save queuing for bag drop. Have a good holiday!

Checking in on-line makes everything quicker, confirms your seat in the case of over booking and helps with 1st stage security.

Checking in online and having it on your phone is much easier. Take screenshot as well, much more convenient. Xx

Check the airport but you can bag drop the day before at Birmingham with Jet2 - straight in the lounge! 😀

If you join their frequent flier programme you can usually check in up to 48 hours before the flight and choose your seats. Boarding pass on phone and then use bag drop at the airport if needed.

I've also used it several times for myself and for others (work) when we've got stuck in traffic or when dropping the car off. Usually if you're checked in they'll give you longer to make the flight. You often have to check in two hours before a flight but I'll never forget driving the wrong direction for Tampa. They told us that as long as we could get there by X time we could get on the flight - only about twenty minutes! They raced us through (I suspect that bit for VIPs), pretended to steal our donuts and we made the flight without anyone on board really noticing we were late...

Last time with easyJet I had to print (or have them on my phone) my boarding passes as it's automated at the airport - you scan your boarding pass and attach the printout to your luggage yourself. You don't talk to a human (this was when travelling to Spain).

We flew with Jet2 in July, checked in online. A lady met us at arrivals to guide us to the correct queue. We were sent to weigh and tag our hold luggage and scan boarding passes. Another lady was at the weigh in who helped us scan and tag. She then directed us to the bag drop off point where a third lady ensured our cases were tagged and on the conveyor belt the right way up.
It all just felt like extra faff! If the staff are there check me in as normal. And all the extra charges for luggage, seats etc is ridiculous.

Yes, I've seen this happen with Ryanair

Back in the day we had to phone to confirm return flights!

Definitely always check in beforehand.

"Checked in online" doesn't mean you're on the plane (EasyJet lets you do it up to 30 days before the flight). You just click on the check-in thing and that's when the boarding pass appears on the app on your phone. It doesn't mean you're physically there. And then, yes of course you do have to go through security and show your passport and all that (although a lot of airports now have machines to read the passport). Then you show the passport again, with the boarding-pass app, when you go through the gate and onto the plane.

Some people don't check in bags, they have hand luggage only. So it saves them queueing up and it saves the airline having to deal with more people queuing up just to get a bit of paper issued to them.

No, they're three different things. Bag drop is handing over any luggage which is going in the hold, security is having yourself and your bags scanned / searched for anything illicit and check in is where you announce your presence and get issued with your physical boarding pass (or it used to be). But nowadays we have the technology where people can just get the boarding pass on their phones, or print it at home, and save the queueing for that (saves the airline some work too). And you won't be queueing anyway if you don't have hold luggage.

Getting your boarding pass on your phone - that's when it pops up in the app. (This is also where you would be able to print it at home if you want to do it that way).

You check in online so at the airport you just have to scan the boarding pass and the machine gives you a luggage tag, you then just put on the conveyor, no queues usually

Me neither. And you can print off two passes in case you lose one. You have to get it out and put it away so many times in some airports, especially when they want you to scan it to see how long the security queue is taking, that it's quite easy to mislay it.

I have it on my phone where it's an option, and also have a printed version.

I also agree that showing a piece of paper is easier than faffing about with a phone. I use e-tickets for the trains, but that's because SWR have decided that anyone using a railcard with a paper ticket is a fraudster and so blocks your access and exit at the ticket barriers, whereas I've never once had a problem with my e-ticket (held in Google Wallet as a pp said). For air travel, it's not so much of an issue.

I hope you got a prompt refund for the difference in fare. I often see articles in the Times consumer pages where this has happened to people and the airlines are incredibly reluctant to refund the business/premium class fare.

So from what I can tell checking in online means getting your boarding pass and choosing your seats?
But you still have to do all the other stuff at the airport - security, passport control etc.
I think I've got it now 😂

That’s one take on it - it may not seem like much of a big deal but for many it can save a big chunk of time if just travelling with handbaggage.

I know to those that don’t fly a lot or those that always check in bags it may seem a bit pointless but if you are a frequent/very frequent flyer who flies hand baggage only you really want to avoid having to queue in line for a desk just to collect a piece of paper - doing that on every trip can really add up, worse case, to literally a day or more out of your life over the year.

Yes, check in online, your seats won’t get allocated until check in. Unless you pre booked them. If you get seated apart from each other then you can reallocate yourself at check in online.
also no one prints boarding pssses anymore. Download the airline app and add them to your wallet on your phone from there!
also quite a lot of check ins close 2 hours prior to the flight now! Bag drop or is just for dropping bags. And quite often it’s not even with a person it’s self serve from a machine.

The purpose of online check-in before the flight is to provide the airline with an opportunity to charge extra for those who have forgotten to do so, and also to allow more room for over-booking as inevitably there will be more people who forget to check in online 24hrs before the flight or naively hope to do so on the day.

If you check in 24 hours before the flight, then fail to turn up on time, they can re-sell your seat. It's your fault, there's no risk to the airline.

So while pre-paid empty seats are more profitable than pre-paid occupied seats. A seat that has been sold twice is highly profitable. Airlines hate empty unpaid seats for obvious reasons.

Kerching! It's all about the money, and I can assure you that the airline will have analysed the risk (by flight/destination/time of flight) of over-booking against the cost of occasionally having to provide a later flight at reduced cost, against the profit to be made from double booking, and it works out in their favour by a wide margin. Return flights from holiday destinations particularly so as you won't have a printer / may not have a data/WIFI connection / drink too much on the last night before your return rlight and forget to check-in early online.

Better put than I could have done.

@JustAnotherDadOf2

If you check in 24 hours before the flight, then fail to turn up on time, they can re-sell your seat.

Interesting theory but I can see a few problems with it.

Manual Check can close as late as STD -45 minutes with some airlines, which doesn’t give much if any time to start reselling and if checked bags are involved that would risk delaying the flight…and delays get expensive very quickly.

As far as the on-line checks-ins go, you really don’t know if they are going to turn up until the gate shuts/aircraft doors close, hopefully just before STD.

You might have a good clue if they don’t make the conformance timing at the airports where that applies, but that’s often as late as about STD -35, so again opening up to resell risks delaying the flight.