What's the point of "early check-in" for a flight?

[Telemark]

@Machine_Elf

I used to operate like that, and then finally realized I was being paranoid.

Not paranoid, just reducing risk. It’s a trivially easy thing to do, costs you nothing, and gives peace of mind.

[veryfrank]

@LSLGuy

It amazes me in this day and age how many people persist in thinking that an airline ticket is like a theater or sporting event ticket: good on that one day for that one flight only. Miss it and you’ve lost your money.

Your ticket (payment for passage) and your reservation (which flight you’ll ride on) have always been two separate ideas only loosely connected. You need both to go, but they are not the same thing.

I actually didn’t fully realize this. Though I only fly every couple of years or so, so applying the amount of a cancelled (by me) flight to a later one would usually fall outside a window.

[LSLGuy]

Although lest I mislead, there’s this too:

@FinsToTheLeft

This is the case for the legacy carriers, but I think many people are flying low cost carriers that a) have very cheap flights and b) have relatively expensive penalties.

For example, I picked a flight on Frontier Airlines on Nov 24 from ATL to MIA. Beyond the 24 hour free cancellation window, the admin fee to cancel is $99. The price of the ticket? $36.

I had not realized things had gotten that extreme in the ULCC arena. Thanks for that and today I learned something.

My knowledge and bias is pretty exclusively limited to the legacy names with a side order of Southwest.

[WildaBeast]

@Dewey_Finn

I think the airlines try to get volunteers to be bumped rather than bumping someone involuntarily.

That’s been my experience as well. They always try to get someone to volunteer before bumping someone involuntarily, and 99% of the time they get a volunteer.

IIRC the type situation where they have to bump people involuntarily is when the flight was planned to be operated by a 737-900 with 170 seats, but that plane has mechanical problems and gets replaced at the last minute with a 737-800 with 150 seats (for example). Assuming the flight was full, now 20 people have to be bumped. And while finding one or two volunteers is usually fairly easy, they’re never going to find 20. And that’s where the list of factors @FinsToTheLeft posted comes into play.

[FinsToTheLeft]

@LSLGuy

My knowledge and bias is pretty exclusively limited to the legacy names with a side order of Southwest.

Southwest puts Frontier, Spirit, and RyanAir to shame for what they include. That $36 base fare can have an early boarding fee, carry on bag charge charge, and other ancillary fees that are 3x-4x the base fare.

[Dewey_Finn]

When Southwest first started its check-in 24 hours in advance to secure a place in line to board, I was able to get a really high boarding position by checking in exactly 24 hours in advance. But now many people are onto that trick, plus they sell the first fifteen boarding positions for an extra fee (Upgraded Boarding), and I’m only able to get a boarding position of under A30 by paying for Early Bird Check In.

[SunUp]

Also, to board early on Southwest: fly west across time zones.

Checking in on Southwest checks you in for all legs of your flight. So if you’re flying from, for example, Laguardia to Los Angeles via Denver, your leg starting in Denver will normally start its checkin two hours for the time zone difference plus flying time and layover after your leg starting in Laguardia. If you check in as soon as you can for your Laguardia leg, you’ll be checked in hours before anyone else on that flight who are flying direct from Denver to L.A., and probably sooner than a lot of folks going from the Central time zone through Denver to L.A.

It happens going east as well except that the time zone difference works against you instead of for you, so the effect is not quite as visible.

[Smapti]

I’m feeling increasingly vindicated in my always booking Alaska or higher.