There was a time when there fliers had to rush to the airports and go straight to the airline counters for checking in their baggage and getting the boarding passes. Computers and the internet were still in the nascent stages of development. Since there were not many passengers who could afford air travel, the check in counter used to have long queues of people at popular destinations. However, as web-based services such as ticketing and booking became possible, people turned to internet to perform all possible tasks that were to be done at the airport so that time could be saved and there is efficiency of operations. Besides booking of tickets or checking the flight schedules or pnr status, the facility of web check in was also provided to the passengers.
Check In refers to the process of submitting you luggage to the airline to be carried inside the cargo hold, selecting seats for seating and getting the boarding pass. Worldwide, the airlines have begun to provide online check in facilities to the passengers. Indian carriers have also begun to provide the same of late. Indigo, the carrier which commands more than one third of Indian aviation traffic, also provides this facility. To begin with, only those passengers who were travelling on domestic flights and carrying only hand baggage were allowed to check in online. This was so because there were security considerations in allowing check in luggage through using the online medium. While the limitation of using this facility is still that it is not permitted on the international flights, there is relaxation with respect to non-hand baggage which can now be checked in online for travel from select airports where there are drop off counters. So, the passengers using these airports for departure are required to put their bags at these counters and then move on to the security counters, skipping the check in counters. The cities where the drop-off counters are available are Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Kochi and Ahmadabad. These are likely to increase in future as carrier adds infrastructure and capacity to this end.
For web-based check in, there are two requirements:
a) Provide the booking reference number or the PNR no
b) Either provide the email ID or provide first and last names along with source and destination cities.
It is to be noted that the carrier does not permit certain passengers to use this method. Their physical presence at the airport counters is mandatory. These passengers are unaccompanied minors, passengers carrying infants and those disabled people who use wheelchairs.
Nguyen An Tra My
Martin Wynn
