Originally Posted by
adrianlondon
What's the point of checking in? I assumed it was to show the airline you had the intention of taking the flight, but with airlines such as Easyjet allowing check-in 30 days in advance I'm obviously wrong.
If check-in happens automatically, why bother; why not just sell the ticket and be done with it?
It is a legacy of paper tickets that we are stuck with because electronic tickets were designed to be functionally identical to paper tickets.
The check in process is part of how the airline gets paid for the flight. At this time the airline collects the (electronic) flight coupon from the (electronic) ticket which acts as a financial document. Actually the airline collects the coupon when you board the plane, but it would be rather inconvenient if you were allowed to get to the gate with your bag in the hold before a ticketing problem or non-payment situation were discovered.
If the coupon were transferred to the airline earlier, it would make it difficult for a travel agent to make changes to the flight or for you to use an open coupon on a different flight (or carrier), while ensuring everything is properly audited and ensuring everyone knows which airline is supposed to get paid by whom. So IATA decided that this should not happen more than 30 hours in advance of departure.
Of course we can all invent different ways for the accounting to work but this system is tried and tested for the last forty years. And everyone uses it so you need to change everyone globally at once, or maintain compatibility with the old system while you change all the procedures and training and computer systems.
If the airline doesn't need to work with travel agents or other airlines, then it of course is free to arrange boarding passes how it wishes.