If I’m checking a bag, I rarely bother checking in online in advance. It just doesn’t save any time. Airline processes are just too cumbersome. There are some airlines in the world that have a ‘just drop the bag and go’ process, but most do not. It really shouldn’t be that hard.
American Airlines has finally made a simple improvement to their bag check process that’s actually a nice time-saver. When you check in online, and opt during that check-in process to check bags, customers can walk up to a kiosk and go right to ‘print bag tags’ rather than walking through a repeat of all of the steps.
The customer begins at a full-service kiosk by either scanning the boarding pass, inputting the AAdvantage number or ticket number. If they have added bags online and already checked-in, there will be an intercept screen with 2 options.1. Print bag tags – When selected, this will directly go to the printing screen and print all the bag tags within that PNR and go to the thank you screen, and the session will end.
2. Need something else – When selected, this will take the customer through the standard kiosk flow, starting with the Hazmat screen, allowing them to do additional tasks.
This doesn’t just save each customer time at the kiosk. I’m a big advocate of saving time. It’s why I don’t like checking bags – not just because I far prefer being in control over my own destiny rather than at the mercy of lost luggage – I don’t want to spend half an hour or more at baggage claim on each end of a trip, multiplied out over scores of trips each year, year after year. I don’t want to look back on my life and think, “I wasted half a year of my life at baggage claim.”
I also don’t want to spend more time than necessary standing at an airline kiosk. But this does something more than that. You spend less time queueing for a kiosk when each customer spends less time at the kiosk. So while this seems like a small improvements, the world is made up of continued improvement at the margin.
The earlier innovation was express bag tag kiosks so that customers who have pre-paid bags to print bag tags right away. But now standard ‘full service’ kiosks (he said, unironically) contain this same functionality.
I take great comfort in knowing that if the queue for AA kiosks moves too fast as a result of this development, Isom will surely soon reduce the number of them to cut cost.
Precisely what has happened the last few times I have flown JetBlue. I check in online and print my boarding pass if I have a printer. Then at the airport, I punch in my name at the kiosk because it is faster. The print checked bag tags comes up first and then I usually print the boarding pass from the kiosk because it is smaller so I can easily carry it with me. This way I have a back up copy if I printed at home. I am not comfortable having my boarding pass information on a cell phone. Then I give the bag to the check-in agent. Pretty soon I will be as good as a check-in agent at putting on the checked bag tag.
Me & my family have never done the early check in thing at airports at all
The baggage claim at SFO T3 is where I met my incredibly beautiful, intelligent, driven, and wonderful wife.
She was wearing a Paul, Weiss backpack and my pickup line was a joke about Brad Karp.
Impressed with the PPEP of my firm (even higher than hers), she agreed to go on a date with me at a sushi restaurant just north of the city of San Francisco. The night ended with beautiful waterfront views. Ahhh…
Bottom line, you don’t know what you’re missing at baggage claim.
If you have low status, checking in keeps you from getting bumped.
I wonder if someone at American recently flew Alaska – this seems to be how their kiosks function.
*Although I wish Alaska would have at least kept 2 kiosks at our airport for “full service” rather than just printing bag tags.
Great post SFO/EWR!
So SFO/EWR we are supposed to be impressed with your job and your wife. What a loser!
This is worth a full article?
And are they really so behind the times?
I’m trying to figure how you arrived at the half year at baggage claim assertion but I’m coming up empty.
Let’s say that your median lifespan is somewhere around 35 more years. That works out to about a day a month wasted. In my experience bags normally take somewhere around twenty minutes to arrive after you get to the baggage claim carousel, maybe less.
20 minutes x let’s say a flight with checked baggage every single day forever for the rest of your life is 20×30 days per month x 12 months=120 hours, or less than five days per year.
You’d have to live for ninety years more while doing this every single day to hit your number. Maybe an adjustment might be in order.
My issue with checking bags that during irregular operations it highly complicates what is already a problematic issue. If I have my bags with me I can easily look at other flights and other routings. If I have a checked bag likely my bag is not going to go with me. Then I have to think about when/where I’m going to get it back. I look for hotels with laundry facilities or a local laundry mat close by.
The issue to me with the Kiosks (and even bag-tag only ones) is that you still generally have to wait in line to drop your bag. Thus, you could be waiting in two lines. It would be nice to have a true human-free bag drop (that may exist but I haven’t seen it).
“It would be nice to have a true human-free bag drop (that may exist but I haven’t seen it).” Qantas has that for domestic flights. I rather like it. It does weigh the bag and measure it. I think I also experienced something like that on DL at ATL in 2020 or 2021.