Auto check-in?
 

Has anyone checked in for a flight this evening? A post on a.net has screenshots that show a new option that enables someone to enable auto check-in at 24 hours and have their boarding passes automatically delivered. It looks like this is only available for your return trip.

Won't this have a pretty significant impact on sequence numbers when it comes to EUAs?

Here is a link to it. It is on the very bottom of the page.

No more getting up at 6am or staying up til 2am to do OLCI for some trips.

I used this feature this afternoon to "auto check in" for a return flight tomorrow. Don't know what the effect was on SEQ because I will need to wait until tomorrow to print out those BP's. It was single-click simple though.

ATF

Edited - this is also the flight that puts me into the Realm of Platinumhood :)

That really stinks for hub flyers, with any connecting traffic now automatically being checked in first on their flight.

At least when it was manual you could count on being SEQ 5/7 at checkin.

We'll have to see how this works.

This is very cool.

I wonder how they're handling return flights where the outbound hasn't completed.

Example:

Same day turn AAA-BBB-CCC, returning CCC-BBB-AAA

Normally, one can checkin for their flight 24 hours before the first segment. However in this scenario, 24 hours prior to departing CCC, co.com will choke on this return, presumably because the outbound has not been flown/used yet.

Only at 24 hours prior to BBB-AAA will co.com let you checkin for the return departing CCC.

So, if CO has some trigger set at about 24 hours out from your "return" flight (out of CCC in this case), I wonder if it will fail auto-checkin in this scenario, since it fails under traditional OLCI anyway.

I did 24 hr OLCI Weds for a Thurs flight - sequence 1 on all three segments. Since I must do a Continental Connection flight first that is 4 and 8 hours earlier than final two segments, I am always sequence 1 on those final two segments. This is not new - been doing this for a couple of years. I'd happily give up sequence 1 if I could cut off four extra hours on each end of the trip waiting for and flying on a stinky commuter flight.

However, yesterday was the first that I saw I could check-in for my return flight on Sunday! I asked for the passes to be ready at the kiosk at the airport - I assumed when I got to the airport on Sunday for my return trip. I toowill see what happened on those sequence numbers.

THis is a great enhancement - if it works by giving me seguence 1 on the return.

For those who have tried it, how does it handle your seat selection?

I am also curious to know how the sequencing will work if several people have selected this option and are eligible for check-in at the same time. Will the order of elites be followed (Plats, Golds, then Silvers)?

For the outbound, works the same as always, you can review seat selection before printing boarding pass. For the return, I did not see that option. However, I went back to look at my record after I printed my outbound passes to see if there was anything different that showed I was checked in for the return. I could see nothing different and went to the seating charts and could still change them (for the return) since it was not at the 24 hour mark. My guess is that the seat I selected for the return will be the seat noted on my boarding pass when I get it at the airport on SUnday.

The new automatic check-in doesn't really change how OLCI works for connecting flights. Connecting flights were always eligible for check-in at the same time as the first flight on the itinerary. So, if you were flying AUS-IAH-EWR, you could check in for both the AUS-IAH and IAH-EWR flights 24 hours before the AUS-IAH flight. It's been that way as long as OLCI has existed. Of course, if a connecting passenger doesn't use OLCI and waits until they get to the airport to check in, then it really doesn't matter, as that passenger will be checked in for both AUS-IAH and IAH-EWR at the AUS ticket counter.

The real difference here is that the system will automatically check you in for the return flight(s), if you used OLCI for the outbound flight(s).

Right that's what I'm saying...as a hub flyer you could count on many people just not checking in. Now you could have a heavy amount of connections automatically checked in before you at their original 24hr, travelers that normally would not checkin until getting to the terminal.

Yes, but why would those people be more likely to use OLCI now than they were before. Are you referring to their return journey? Why would this change make someone who wasn't going to use OLCI at all before suddenly start using it now?

Anyway, I would expect that most elites who are really concerned about their sequence number (or even understand how all that works) are already checking in online right at 24 hours. Those who are not using OLCI now probably aren't going to immediately start using it just because of this change. It may mean that some passengers who don't have access to a computer during their trip are more likely to be checked in 24 hours in advance for their return trip than before, but how many of those travelers are elite?

To me the biggest benefit of this is to people like my parents, who are semi-frequent leisure travelers, who don't have a laptop or a mobile phone capable of doing OLCI. They always do OLCI for their outbound trip from home, but almost never for their return trip. But to someone like that, I don't see much benefit, since they'd still have to stop by the kiosk at the airport to obtain a boarding pass.

If the PDA boarding pass thing spreads it could be beneficial to a lot of people. Especially on short trips it would save you from having to take time to check-in when you might be preoccupied otherwise.

It would only matter for their return trip the way Auto check-in is setup. From personal experience I'd say that it's easier to check-in from home vs. the return. So now you have an increased pool of travelers that did not have access to OLCI for their return that are suddently automatically checked-in because they were able to complete OLCI for their originating station.