Even A Nobel Economist Got Stumped By Airport Self-Check-In — Travelers Still Need A Human [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Self-service needs to be really strong, and that does cut down on customer service time (and expense). But most travelers find the process of air travel really intimidating and overwhelming.

    That said, the example of a Nobel laureate in economics being unable to use the self-checkin process hardly means what is suggested here. I’ve met five Nobel economists at work and my sense was that three would not have managed these kiosks.

    At some point, when you arrive at an airport, you want a human being to say “Right, you’re good to go.”

  • Turbulence. Wear your seat belt.

  • Airbnb manages to be a bad experience for property owners and guests alike.

  • Singapore Airlines makes business class awards like basic business, restricts access to most seats

  • Many travelers use VPNs. When you use a VPN, the government says they can’t tell what country you’re in, and therefore you’re fair game for surveillance.

  • The most Euro-summer thing imaginable.

  • The D.C. concierge who’s spent half a century catering to guests’ every whim 50 years as a concierge, 20 at the InterContinental Willard D.C. (WaPo)

    “I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than being able to solve somebody’s problem or to surprise and delight a guest,” said Watson, who has spent more than three-quarters of his 67 years working as a concierge. “We can do anything as long as it’s legal and moral, so that gives us a big spectrum of what we can do from A to zed.”

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Many travelers use VPNs.

    And shouldn’t. Unless you have a traditional use case of remote-access to systems inside a security perimeter you probably don’t need a VPN when TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS will do.

  2. As someone who earned a PhD in Economics, I have met several Nobel Laureates as well. Ultimately, the Nobel is given as a lifetime achievement award, a prize for writing a paper that had such an impact on the profession that it must be recognized.

    This has nothing to do with executive function, or other characteristics required to use those self-check-in machines.

  3. @Gary – you got this right last week when you said “There’s really no excuse in 2026 to have passengers self-tag their bags at a kiosk – and then stand in line for an hour to hand that bag to a staff member.”

    I have no problem with self-check in for business class – a kiosk can verify my passport just as easily as a staff member. What I do have a problem with is waiting in a “priority line” for 15-30 minutes to check my bag.

  4. Gary – if you read the comments on the Singapore article you would see they debunk the proposed change. Guess that is harder than just including a link with a provocative title though

  6. I flew NZ out of AKL to Austrslia twice in the last 16 months. The second time, they had kiosks and self tagging. It worked great. However, you didn’t tag and hand to a person. You went to a station, placed the bag on the belt, it read the tag, and the bag was weighed and measured by lasers.. It then transported the bag to the next stage. It worked great.

  7. I’ve known 3 Nobel economics laureates. The implicit argument “if a Nobel economics laureate can’t figure out the bag check . . .” is not a strong argument that the system is too difficult for the “average traveler.” That said, with my computer programming background, I am often astounded at how badly designers understand user friendliness. Case in point. For years, I was frustrated by booking website that would have me repeated push to get the November calendar page so I could click on the November 6 arrival date, only to present me with the current month when I needed to enter the departure date. So, I push next months multiple times to get to November.

  8. @This comes to mind – I’ve sometimes wondered if we need to start certifying and licensing User Interface designers.

  9. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to again share Richard Feynman’s wisdom. “Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.”
    —Richard Feynman, 1965 Noble prize winning physicist
    BTW…I love U-235

  10. Feynman is right, but this does necessarily apply here. Nobel prize winners in the sciences are intelligent, certainly in their fields, and often broader. It doesn’t mean they are brilliant everywhere. The absent-minded professor stereotype is overblown, but exists for a reason.

  11. @This comes to mind — You really do like to go Down Under, eh? Where’s ‘Austrslia’?

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