San Gottardo

Trying to check-in for a flight from Europe to Qatar. It's now 40 hours to departure, and I keep getting a message that flight is not open for checkin, and the check in will open 48 hours before departure.

This is not a flight from/to the US, which I know has different deadlines, so I'm wondering when online check-in does actually open, as the claim of 48 hours before is evidently not true.

purple1addict

Normally 48 hours to the exact second but I also had trouble checking in online yesterday and it was a good couple of hours later before I was able to complete check-in so keep trying.

I think once before on here someone commented that your connecting flight should be within 60 hours of your check-in for the first segment (although I haven't personally encountered that before) - could that be your issue?

Otherwise probably just some gremlins in the system!

San Gottardo

Indeed, must have been gremlins in the system. I managed to check in about 40 hours before departure.

purple1addict

Glad you managed to check in eventually.

It's normally so reliably 48 hours in advance that my first thought when I couldn't immediately check in was that I must have accidentally booked the wrong flight date

remdk

San Gottardo there is one possible reason that is often forgotten but is rather frequent at the present time: Change of aircraft!
How can you check-in for a flight when the seat map is still unknown?

I have only once experienced this problem with OLCI and it was for the second flight of my journey that I could not check-in for in spite of it being within the 60 hour limit. When check-in finally opened for that flight there was an aircraft change from B787 to A332! Not all of these delays to OLCI start result in an aircraft change but that is entirely due to the skill of the schedulers that allocate aircraft to flights.

Which would you prefer:
To check-in on time using an old seat map only to find out at the airport that the aircraft has changed and you had a new seat allocated
OR
wait a few hours and be able to use the correct seat map?

San Gottardo

Clearly the second. But in my case there has been no aircraft change, and the connecting flight was within 60 hours of check-in time. And it was not a US-bound or US-origin flight.

Hence my confusion.

remdk

San Gottardo I fully understand your confusion and frustrations and you were absolutely correct to air them on this forum.

As I tried to point out not all aircraft replacements are also a change of aircraft type.

At this time, with almost all available aircraft being utilised to near the maximum, one aircraft needing unscheduled repairs could result in many flights being affected over several days.

spec119

I had the very same issue last week unable to check until a rough guess 45 hours when I called QR they told me it was 36 hours I then quoted the text from the top of the website re 48hrs which amused me somewhat

purple1addict

Haha! The irony being that it's always been 48 hours in practice - even back when they used to say 36 hours on the website and in-flight announcements etc!