AKICOLJ: Airport check-in

[philmophlegm]

Question: When you 'check in' to a flight, what are you actually doing?

I mean, you can now check in remotely and 24 hours in advance of your flight, so it's not about saying "I'm here and I will definitely be needing the seat on the plane that I've already booked". Neither is it about showing your passport since you still need to do that (probably several times) at the airport. And you still need to go and drop off your luggage when you arrive at the airport.

If you travel by train, you don't have to 'check in', and 'checking-in' to a hotel is all about them giving you the room key and pre-approving your credit card.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

You are guaranteeing to spend time being a captive customer of a range of overpriced retail outlets, which the airport takes a large cut from.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

But online check-in reduces the time you have to be exposed to those overpriced retail outlets.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It's probably a trade-off between reduced income and reduced expenses.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

The airport may take a large cut from retail outlets, but the *airline* doesn't (not directly, at least), and I'm pretty sure that when you check in, you are checking in with the airline rather than the airport.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

The airport can "encourage" airlines to have long check-in times, though.

[purplecat]

I've always assumed its some kind of an actuarial exercise on the airline's part in estimating how many people will actually turn up for the flight, plus I bet there's some fine print somewhere which makes it easier for them to give "not checked in but booked" seats to other people if the plane is full. At least I've always assumed that what I'm getting out of it is that my seat won't get given to someone else until all the seats for people who haven't checked in have been given away.

[king-of-wrong.livejournal.com]

Yeah, most airlines overbook slightly as a few people won't turn up for whatever reasons.

Except on really busy flights, they know they can fix it with a cabin roll: fill empty spaces in First with Business passengers, fill the extra Business seats with Economy frequent-flyers, and you have space for the extra passengers. If it all goes wrong, they'll ask for volunteers to take a later flight (usually with cash and/or free upgrade as payment). And if that goes wrong, they just have to kick someone off and pay compensation... but that normally only happens when planes are taken out of service by maintenance issues or severe weather disruption and they've an entire flight to accommodate.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

But that doesn't explain why they allow you to check in so far in advance when you're not even at the airport. While it's probably safe to assume that someone prepared to endure the typical modern airport wants to get away from that airport as quickly as possible, there must still be lots of people who change their mind in the space of 24 hours.

[purplecat]

I'm assuming, I suppose, that there is less statistical variation in the ratio of people who check in but don't turn up, than there is in the ratio of people who book but don't turn up. Therefore it gives the airline more concrete information about the likely actual numbers than they can get from the booking information alone.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

If you travel by some trains you do have to check in - I'm thinking of Eurostar in particular, though I'm sure it's also true for things like the Orient Express. Ditto some but not all boat/ferry type things. So it seems to be in part about the relative 'importance' of the journey/mode of transport (that's not really the right word, but I can't think of a better right now.) I suppose I mean for things that have a greater sunk cost, whether monetary or organisational or whatever, on the part of the provider *and* the consumer, the more sure they need to be about knowing how many people are going to take up the service, and ensuring the people who want to be there are. (consider last minute calls for passengers by name at airports versus "the train is now departing".)

So I suppose, to come back to your question, 'checking in' is about confirming close to the time of the journey that you still intend to be there, and remote check-in isn't quite as good for that as on the spot check-in but has other values in eg customer satisfaction that outweigh the disadvantages. So I pretty much agree with Louise.