Originally Posted by
pairofkeets
I guess this is the main benefit consumer wise, other than selecting a seat if you were previously unable to do so. Above all else I'm guessing its mostly a money saving thing for the airline, since if you check in online you'll most likely get your boarding pass at the same time and they don't have to print it for you.
Well, in some cases it may allow you to choose a
better seat (free'd up by elites who just got upgraded), and that seat may gone by 2 hours out.
Also, if you qualify for PreCheck, and the airline supports it, remember it's not guaranteed, so you want to know sooner rather than later if you didn't get PreCheck on
this boarding pass so you can allow more time for getting through security. Finding that out 2 hours before the flights may be too late, given recent non-PreCheck security lines at some airports
.
Or if you checking in online at an airline where you've not done that before (or not in a long time), you might want to know sooner rather than later if you're going to have technical problems with it (and thus may need to allow time to check in at the airport).
So while checking in exactly 24 hours out may not make much difference, checking in as soon as is convenient after that (rather than waiting until it's 2 hours out) would seem more prudent to me. 2 hours out requires everything to work perfectly, which doesn't
always happen.