Truly automatic check-in will make you hate airports a little less

Bloomberg

Airports are the gateway through which we escape our daily drudgery. They allow us to wing our way to vacations, family reunions, even business junkets. But tainting every trip is the prospect of stress and frustration that comes with negotiating an infrastructure that envelops us from fare shopping to seat belt-click.
There’s the ticketing counter, the kiosks, the bag check, the bag claim, security queues, pat downs, crowded gates, boarding pass scans, jet bridge loitering, overhead bin mishegas—you get the idea. And that’s not even a full review of the pain points. There has to be an easier way.
This resistance to the unhindered flow of travellers hasn’t escaped the airlines who are partially to blame for it. They are spending large sums for technology to ease your journey, and the day isn’t terribly far off when your eyeball or fingerprint will guide you through security, airport lounges, and boarding gate. That day, however, is not this day.
Delta Air Lines Inc. recently struck a tiny blow for greater transit efficiency by automatically checking-in some passengers for their flights and putting an electronic boarding pass in the traveller’s Delta mobile app. The change eliminates the traditional “It’s time to check in” reminder.
Currently, Delta allows auto check-in only for those who use the airline’s mobile app, are travelling domestically, and have enrolled in its SkyMiles loyalty programme.
Some airlines, including JetBlue Airways Corp. and easyJet Plc, allow you to pay the bag fee upfront when booking, but you still have to go to the counter to drop it off. “They haven’t escaped the 1920s—seriously”.
This raises some obvious questions: Why must airline customers still check-in at all? And why is a boarding pass divorced from the ticket sale?
“They haven’t escaped the 1920s—seriously,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. “Airline check in dates back to the beginning of airline travel when we had paper tickets.”
The process, however, does serve a purpose important to airline bottom lines. It remains a decent proxy for how many people will miss a flight, helping carriers manage no-shows and fill those empty spots.
These days, you typically lose your seat if you don’t check in at least 30-45 minutes ahead of a flight. But with ever-rising load factors feeding robust, year-round stand-by lists, tracking no-shows
is less important given that the
carrier will almost certainly fill
the seat.
For airlines like Delta, one procedural hiccup to thinning check-in make-work is the federal mandate that each traveler acknowledge the items prohibited aboard airplanes—that is, no toxic chemicals or filled gasoline pails may be brought aboard. This currently happens during check-in.
Delta deals with this by putting the images of banned items on a screen in its app, ahead of access to one’s boarding pass.
Secondly, auto check-in could create trouble for itineraries that involve more than one airline, said Rhonda Crawford, Delta’s vice president of global distribution and digital strategy.
Next up may be boarding passes via email for everyone, Harteveldt said. The ubiquity of smartphones also means that airlines are very likely to eliminate paper, one
day, and the number of social messaging platforms—from Facebook
to WhatsApp to Twitter—offers airlines plenty of places to conduct these transactions, even for people not keen to download a carrier’s app.