exerda

All of the kiosks seem very slow, but particularly the CO-style thermal paper ones (vs. thermal cardstock). At RSW last week, one gentleman walked away without ever getting his BPs (the next pax said, "Hey, this thing is stuck... no, wait, it's printing that guy's stuff finally!"), and my experience was 50 seconds for the first BP and another 35 for the 2nd (yes, I timed it).

I know PMUA's kiosks weren't ever this slow, and IIRC, the PMCO ones, though slower, were nonetheless significantly faster than what we see now.

What gives?

aCavalierInCoach

COdbaUA has invested in cameras for these; they are reading the degree of frustration on your face as you wait for your boarding pass. They will use this information to determine which customers they can put through the most irrops/lost baggage/missed upgrades/lack of award availability/high prices without losing them.

LilAbner

Actually jiggling, banging, or kicking them works very well but be careful not to trigger the "TILT" mechanism.

CJ99

Because he's trying to ask you, in 3 languages and 2 different ways, whether you want to buy more miles.

CDKing

Try printing 6 on a MR. I was about to take a nap while the printing was going on.

RobOnLI

Would you rather the airline goes back to the days of agents hand-writing each and every boarding pass? How's that for lines?

If I had to guess (and I have no idea how UA's machines actually work) - an image of the boarding pass is created in Houston or Chicago or wherever the kiosk is communicating with and then that entire image file has to be downloaded to the kiosk for printing. The image includes the logo, seat data, flight data, etc. etc. It could be that it takes a long time to create the image on the mainframe, or it takes a long time to download it, or it takes a long time to render it on the kiosk. Does anyone know what kind of data connection the kiosks have back to the data center? Is it fiber, cable modem (shared amongst all kiosks), 56K dial-up? I'm betting on slow

-RM

Boghopper

None of that explains why the have become painfully slow. They used to be basically fine, but since the march party they have become ridiculous. I've stopped using them.

monksy

UA's terminals have always been slow for me. Although, I have had a finiky US airways terminal or two, where I had to be manually checked in.

star_world

The kiosks that were legacy CO seem to operate at a reasonable speed, maybe a little slower than before but not dramatically so. The kiosks that were legacy UA are now far slower than they were before they were converted - not sure what has caused the change but it can be annoying.

woodway

That's a tough one...I flew on 3/3 and was checked in by hand. I still have my handwritten boarding passes. It was one of the easiest and quickest checkin processes I have ever experienced...

redwoman

I haven't flown for 3 months, then flew 4 times in quick succession this month. The kiosks (PMUA FWIW) were noticeably slower during the last 2 weeks, and the one at ORF last week was just spinning its little wheel over and over so I gave up.

Which made me appreciate the F class checkin agent's telling me"use the kiosk" even more. Yeah right lady. I'm standing in the F line because I fly so much that I got upgraded (after all, who in their right mind would PAY for F on a tiny regional jet), which means that if I'm not using the frickin' kiosk, it means THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH IT AND I NEED YOUR HELP. One of us is indeed stupid, and here's a teeny hint: it's not me.