One of the more time consuming parts of the whole airport experience is check-in. You arrive at the airport and then have to stand in a line of people, patiently waiting for your turn to be seen.
Once you arrive at the desk, a friendly person brings up your booking, takes your Passport and asks about your bags. You pop those onto the scales, they get tagged, you’re handed a boarding pass and off you go. That’s the traditional method anyway!
Modern Check-In Methods
The next innovation for the whole check-in experience was the kiosk. These machines allow you to get your boarding pass using a touch screen, bypassing the need to actually see a human being. You print your bag tags here also and then drop them off.
The Future of Check-In
Alaska Airlines are investing upgrading the way people do things, with the aim of getting people through in under five minutes. You will need to check-in using your phone, which should be no problem.
Overall Thoughts
It begs the question, how do you prefer to check-in? I have to say I am not a great big fan of having to print off a bag tag and attach it to my luggage myself. What if I don’t stick on the sticker correctly and it ends up falling off the bag? I’ve had my baggage go AWOL before and that was with the tag still attached. It would be horrible to think of what would happen if it came off.
What would make me happier would be the permanent bag tags, like the cute ones Qantas in Australia offer people. These use radio frequency identification (RFID) to track the bags. Of course, the major ports in Australia have been switched over to use this tech, so it works down under. It would be a major undertaking to get all airports doing this, so it’s a pipedream right now.
Personally, I mix it up. When I am flying with hand baggage only, I’ll check-in on my phone and add my mobile boarding pass to my Apple Wallet. I’m completely used to boarding flights this way. However, when I am travelling with checked luggage, I like to go to a desk and hand it over to an agent. I’m not really a fan of printing the tags and putting them on myself, only for fear of screwing it up.
What say you? Are you someone who likes to do it all themselves? Do you mix it up like I do? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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I trust the agent. Sometimes I am nervous about flying, getting there on time, etc.. I prefer the agent who does this for a living.
That’s a very fair call. Thanks for the comment!
I agree with our author here.
I think I trust the eyes of the desk agent more to make sure my bag gets to the back rather than watching a machine eat it, not knowing what happens once the door closes like I see at Haneda.
Although lately I feel like I go to whichever has the shortest line that I can use. Even with a checked bag, kiosk + self tag + clear + precheck got me through what seemed like a line 100 people long at ORD terminal 5 in about 5 minutes.
The one thing that always messes me up though is if the self check kiosk wants you to place the QR code facing up or facing down and it’s not always clear on the terminal itself.
Haha – I haven’t had the pleasure of Haneda yet, but I’m guessing it’s a little terrifying! 🙂 Thanks for the comment!