24 Hour Check In
 

Not sure where to find this (or if it's been addressed previously), but regarding the 24 Hour Prior to Flight Time Check In rule, is this a US or UA thing only ? or does it vary from airline to airline/ or status ? Not a real important issue, but just this week I was able to check into my r/t flight on IB MAD-BIO (out Sat, return Sun) on the Wednesday before, yet my UA flight EWR-MAD tonite (Fri) I had to wait until Thurs evening, and can't check into my return until Sunday morining. I generally fly UA, so it may be just United ??? Any clarification would be appreciated ;)

I think it's very much a US thing. I've traveled on Qatar Airways where check-in to non-US destinations opens up 48 hours prior; however, if you have a US destination, it will not let you check-in until you are in the 24 hour window :)

Check-In times are all over the place.

If you're flying Ryanair, you can check-in 60 days in advance if you buy a seat assignment: https://www.independent.ie/life/trav...-35780869.html, which I believe easyJet does as well. I believe it's 30 hours on Air France, etc.

I seem to recall that TSA/Homeland security forced airlines to reduce check-in times to 24 hours - they had previously been longer.

I suspect it has to do with the time needed to do checks on passenger lists and return data to the airlines - data is sent 72 hours in advance, iirc.

Since OMNI is for non-travel topics, we're going to move this to TravelBuzz!

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Cholula
OMNI Co-Moderator