Originally Posted by
eng3
The airports I usually goto, I see a line in front of each kiosk. If there is an open kiosk with no line, I see no issue with using it if no one else wants to use it. In fact, people seeing me use it may speed up the other lines as they discover it is available. I suppose if I were really nice, I could ask everyone in each line if they want to use the open kiosk before I go over there, but that's beyond the level of niceness I typically have available when I'm at the airport.
If there were one only one line (like at customs) maybe that would be another story.
CLE it was a generally socially distanced blob with people at the front of the blob going to the kiosk in relative order (it seemed) of who had been waiting at the blob longest with the Premier Access/1K group being one blob and regular economy being a distinctly different blob (or perhaps a couple blobs) -- without formal queue markers, and allowing extra space it's kind of hard to tell.
Another airport (why can't I remember where I've been this week? LOL) had a single bank-teller type queue with ropes feeding kiosks
IAD premier access this morning no sense of a formal queue within the pen but every "normal" kiosk had a person using it (or waiting for one of the two agents to affix a bag tag so ABM dude could then move it) and there were a handful of people randomly spread out waiting to us a kiosk. I mentioned the "touchless" kiosk I saw to the young lady closest to me (since there was no queue to be identified but she was definitely there before me) and when she declined I went for the kill.