Is is possible to check in for tomorrow's flight before today's flight leaves?

My wife asked me to check her in for her return flight tomorrow at 3:30p. Her flight today leaves at 4:25p.

The system kept telling me the flight was leaving in less than an hour (for today's flight), so checkin was not possible for tomorrow.

As soon as today's flight departed, it let me checkin for tomorrow's but not a minute sooner.

Is this the way it is supposed to work? What happens if you have multiple flights in one day (not a connection, a new flight?).

Does anyone know?

CO.com has not ever let me check in for a return flight if the outbound portion has not left - even if both flights are on the same day and within the 24 hour check in window.

I had the same experience a few months ago. When I posted about it though, some folks said they'd been able to. That was here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=633564

Re-reading that, I said you can't check in until you have completed your outbound. Maybe that's what I had wrong-- you just have to wait until your outbound departs (I bet you have to wait until the GA has scanned your boarding pass).

That's one of the frustrating aspects of online check-in for trips with same day or other short turnarounds. WN, to its credit, allows its customers to book two one-ways for the same price as a round-trip, which solves this problem as you can check in for each flight separately at its respective 24 hour window. I understand why most airlines are unwilling to price one-ways exactly at half the price of a roundtrip, but I wish some other workaround was available to allow the outbound and return segments to be divorced for purposes of checking in as early as the second the check-in window opens.

It CAN be done. Although co.com can get quirky about it.

I once had a same day turnaround MR to PHX and had no problems.

This past weekend I did a EWR-CGN turnaround and Co.com wouldn't let me check in for the return flight at the 24 hour window but did when the local time in EWR was exactly the same as the time of departure from CGN (i.e. at 11am EST on Saturday for a flight departing from CGN at 11AM CGN time on Sunday [18 hours prior]).

The other trick I found with getting the online check-in to work was to NOT sign in to my account. Rather, from Co.com's home page entering the confirmation number. Any other way and I kept getting error messages that said co.com could not find a valid e-coupon...or something like that. Both online support and reservations could not tell what was wrong and confirmed that my reservations were in sync. Defintely not a SSSS thing because I didn't have any troubles at the airports. Even after reprinting my boarding passes at both airports.

I have another immediate turnaround EWR-CGN this weekend...will report back if I encounter the same problems or if I get shut out from online check-in for the return completely.

I couldn't check in online for CNS-GUM-IAH this week (the link was there) and support also said no synch problems and wasn't SSSS targeted. So maybe co.com can't handle the date line issue either.

Even if I could get online, the online seat map was a mess on CO 1 and CO 2 through flights since I couldn't find a way to see or book better seats beyond HNL on wide open flights when the IAH-HNL-IAH legs were full.

I was watching the timing carefully.

I know my wife was already scanned, because she called from the plane.

When the flight status said "taxiing to runway", I tried again. Nope.

About three minutes later I was able to check her in.

There must be some sort of "close out" process that the gate agent does after the plane leaves that changes the status of the reservation from "checked in" to waiting for next flight segment and available for new checkin.

Of course, by then she was number 10 to check in, rather than lower. Since she is gold, that could make a big difference in her battlefield upgrade this afternoon.

Thanks for all the replies, next time I will try the hint about not logging in.

Yes -- compared to other airlines (UA, NW, AA, etc.), CO's checkin is a bit non-standard in two aspects:

- Return flights cannot be checked in until the final inbound segment is marked as "flown"

- Multiple flights in one direction must be printed on separate screens (e.g., if you have 3 segments, you have to send a BP to the printer 3 times, as opposed to most checkin systems which have the page breaks setup, you just have to send one print job).

I've done ewr-mco-ewr (same day) and ewr-ord-ewr (also same day). I was able to check in for the return legs at the 24 hour mark even though I hadn't flown the outbound leg. If there was a restriction on this, It would seem to be either gone or inconsistent.

Hmm...my only experience is with connecting flights, so I wonder if it works for return flights if your outbound is non-stop, but not connecting.

I prefer it the CO way. Then if you were to later change your seat - you only have to print out one BP. Plus I prefer each boarding pass on a separate sheet - rather than multiple ones on one sheet, like NW.

Me too.

Hi Platcomike, thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. We were able to re-create it, and it'll be fixed in one of our upcoming check-in software releases.

Here's what's happening. Although you can check in for itineraries that depart within 24 hours (including outbound and return in the same shot), we are failing when any portion of the reservation is scheduled to depart within 60 minutes of the transaction - even when that's not the itinerary you're trying to check in. As you may have gathered, we're incorrectly applying our cut-off logic, and that's what we'll be addressing when we fix this issue. If you were to check in before the incorrectly applied cut-off time or after the flight departs, you shouldn't have a problem.


Thanks eagle92 and sobay_terp, we'll definitely look into these possible time zone/date line discrepancies. Thanks for details.


Thanks sobay_terp, for flights that have an enroute stop, we don't yet have the capability to offer separate seat maps for each leg of the flight. We agree this is a needed improvement and it's on our development list.


Thanks channa, you're not alone. We are considering the addition of a "print all" feature that would supplement our current individual page print option. When we first introduced online check-in, many popular browser versions didn't reliably support page breaks. Such is rarely the case these days, so we agree it's time to re-evaluate.

Same problem with the time zone issue. Couldn't check in for my return flight from CGN until 11:00 EST.

I have been able to print boarding passes for the return portion before even going to the airport for th outbound. I got on the plane with the return boarding pass.

OLCI from CNS. I didn't think it was possible. I tried a couple of times, but it never worked.