Bold and bold statement from British Airways as it starts trialling a new system that it claims will revolutionise how passengers will check-in for flights with the carrier.
In fact, BA could eventually do away with vast areas such as those pictured above (the desk area in the new terminal at London’s Gatwick Airport) if its pilot scheme beginning shortly in France comes to fruition.
The idea (whether it is revolutionary and the future or not is debatable) is that the airline will automatically check-in passengers without them having to lift a finger, or click a mouse button/press a screen.
How so?
Twenty-four hours before a flight, selected passengers who opt to take part in the trial will be automatically checked in, assigned a seat and will receive a boarding pass electronically, as BA claims, “saving them the time and effort of going through traditional check-in”.
The automated check-in trial will be extended to a more passengers in early-2013, BA says.
The carrier promises that if the trial is a success the service will be made available as an option to all customers across the British Airways network by the end of that year.
But wait, wasn’t the airline check-in of the future supposed to be all about iris scanning, or facial recognition, boarding passes embedded into a passenger’s skin, etc?
Clearly not – it’s just a tweak to customer service and streamlining existing processes, not tech-related at all!
How the trial pans out in the coming months will be interesting to watch. Will the the seat selection system be efficient and, more importantly, successful with passengers? What happens when a passenger who has signed up to the automated stem has a sudden change of plans? Security issues? Handling delays with transfers?
Lots of questions, no answers as yet.
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Air France is doing automatic check-in since more than 2 years ….
For many travellers the point of check in is to get a seat they like; having hat done for you “blind” is not going to go down well.
Kiosk and now online check-in have made seat choice easier than a debate with the nice check-in lady (not easy with all airlines, many of whom still seem to block allocate most seats rendering online check-in frustrating at best – THY and SAA being two culprits! The rest of you know who you are!)
So, what’s in it for the airline if they move to “automated” check in? $$$ – because then the way to get the seat you want is to pay extra for a specific seat at the time of booking. Of course, that makes the algorithms the airline need to use to assign seats as the flight moves into departure status a bit more complicated, but just, as they say, a “small matter of programming” which might be justified by more revenue?
Quite right that this is neither new, nor particularly creative use of technology, but if it brings in more $$, it’s worth the effort – from the airlines perspective.
Expect to see the BA site putting even more emphasis on paying for a specific seat at booking time!
HEEY!! WHAT IS THIS?
AIR FRANCE INVENTED PACI LONG TIME AGO.
SO THIS FACT THAT BA HAVING A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA IS JUST A WRONG INFO!!
ON AIR FRANCE WEB SITE LONG TIME AGO YOU CAN CHOOSE TO BE CHECKED IN BY 30HOURS PRIOR THE DEPARTURE.
SO./. TELL BA TO THINK AGAIN!
They are going to have to accommodate code-share flights too, in addition to enroute delays.
my bad experience with BA was just in Apr2012, from London to USA, I couldnt check in online bcs the 2nd segment was codeshared with partner airline. I even tried checking in at paddington at kiosk, no avail, but then the heathrow express trains were all being delayed that day too due to security sweeps, and even tho I set out 2 hrs early from my room in downtown london, i got to heathrow 50 mins before dep and was denied boarding bcs I had not checked in at least 1 hr in advance.
but the computer system wouldnt let me check in. and i had a USA cdma phone so i couldnt call BA. But even so, I thought I could at least checkin at Paddington. But even if I had checked in at Paddington, my train was held up for 15mins, plus extra sweep of train where we all had to get off and stand on platform before getting back on just to get on to next terminal.
I guess I should have found a payphone, but those are getting fewer to find. But even if I had checked in before 1 hr, how wouuld an automated system know that I had been on heathrow express train and not actually in the airport and would have missed the plane anyway?
nothing new… LX are doing it, so is AF/KLM