Hi Darren , they will still have to weigh and attach a baggage label at the bag drop , if you have checked in online you will have your boarding card already printed , does this save you time ?? Well not a lot , but it does save easyjet a bit of time and instead of having say 10 checkin desks and 10 baggage drops they eventually will have just 15 bag drops as they are gradually moving over to a check in online process just like ryanair , apparently a big majority of their passengers actually do checkin online , another very good reason for doing this is they will need less desks to process passengers and luggage and this reduces costs significantly ( they have to pay " rent" for the desks to the airport ) so your fares will remain as cheap as possible , so not a great deal of time saved but benefits for easyjet and the passenger in keeping costs as low as possible .
So , no you're not being thick, and neither are they !!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9948026/EasyJet-to-close-its-check-in-desks.html

As from today, Easyjet will no longer have check in desks at airports. This is ok if you have access to a pc and printer at home, there are still a few people who dont.

thewhartons wrote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9948026/EasyJet-to-close-its-check-in-desks.html

As from today, Easyjet will no longer have check in desks at airports. This is ok if you have access to a pc and printer at home, there are still a few people who dont.

For those who don't have either a printer or pc at home try your local library.

In the good old days you had flight specific checking desks where you were welcomed, got a smile and given your boarding pass and left your hold cases..

Also you had to queue to get your boarding ticket even if you didn't have a case to drop off - rarely was that the case in the good old days as then you didn't have to pay for hold cases or have a weight limit to how much you took.

Suitcase contents depended if you were going away for a week, 10 days or if you were really rich and lucky a whole 2 weeks and also how much you could physically carry as then suitcases didn't have wheels - just a handle on the top ! Hand luggage outbound was your coat on the way back duty free fags and booze !

I have been convince from the start online check in is for there convenience not yours

Glynis HT Admin wrote:

thewhartons wrote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9948026/EasyJet-to-close-its-check-in-desks.html

As from today, Easyjet will no longer have check in desks at airports. This is ok if you have access to a pc and printer at home, there are still a few people who dont.

For those who don't have either a printer or pc at home try your local library.

I suppose embracing " new" technology could be a daunting prospect I wonder how you book an easyjet flight if you don't have access to a PC ? And a printer can be bought for as little as £29 and thats scan/ copy and print , even a wireless one is only £49 , if you can't afford a printer then can you really afford to book a flight ?

Lets say you have a flight with easyjet and only have hand luggage , you can now check in online in the comfort of your lovely home while wearing your comfy slippers and on arrival at the airport go straight to security to then board your flight , how is that not convenient to you ??? How I would love to go back to the "good old days" when I could stand in a queue a hundred deep because there was only 2 checkin desks for my flight , while either side the desks were empty !!!!

In the good old days people couldn't afford to fly so easily , I never flew abroad until I was 21 , and that was pretty typical for people around my age group , now ordinary working class people can afford to fly away , flights are now affordable despite the huge cost of fuel because of ancillary charges like luggage and meals and picking seats .
I think easyjet offer a great service when you take into account their low prices , they have recently been innovative in moving forward with customer friendly ideas which helps keeps the costs of operating under control , they are simply moving with the times and not getting bogged down in all that good old days bunk ,

shrimper wrote:

I have been convince from the start online check in is for there convenience not yours

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Like Andy, I'd much rather check-in online from home then have the luxury of bypassing all the queues at the airport and goig straight though to the departure lounge without the hassle of having to do it at the airport. More often than not, baggage drop-off queues are smaller than regular check-in so I would always choose online check-in when available. While it does have cost savings to the airline, these are often passed on in lower fares to the customer and there are advantages to the the customer as well so it's a win / win for me.

Darren

O Andy,

I was just thinking back to the good times !!!

As you say long queues, add to that screaming kids, night flights back from Palma to Luton including groups of lads still drunk from their first Magaluf holiday, 4 hours flight delays, plastic dried up inflight meals with those tubs of orange juice that you spilt into your lap when you tried to take off the foil top, rubbery cheddar cheese in the plastic wrapping and a couple of jacobs biscuits, trying to work out what was in the foil container you have just eaten and of course that plastic cup of tea.

O those good times !!

when we first started flying a PC was a copper and a printer produced your Daily Paper, o happy days !!!

I understand Chris , nothing wrong with nostalgia , but when I hear people say the good old days it tends to be very selective of the things that were good and your list just goes to show that not all things change or improve !!!!!
I think the bag drop will work out well , when they get you to self tag your bag that could be interesting ???

I always travel with luggage and it never seems any quicker dropping it off or checking in at the airport, if I only had a carry on bag I can see the benefit

Same here Shrimper, yes, it saves time when you just have hand luggage but I've encountered queues just as long for bag drops as for check-ins. And the move towards more and more airlines doing only Net-based bookings and on-line check-ins leaves non-IT literate people out in the cold. Now in their 80s, my parents do long for the good old days when they could just walk into their local travel agent and book flight tickets and the like with someone who knew them etc. Now it means them hanging on the phone while either my brother or I do the booking for them, talking through what we can see on a screen that they can't, then later us checking them in on-line and having to post the boarding pass off to them etc. We've become unpaid call centre staff for the likes of EasyJet.

SM

think its a brilliant idea. as someone has said saves you time standing in a long line of people.have always printed off our tickets from day one of this happening , have just printed of my tickets from Belfast to Birmingham next sat, but cnt print of the tickets for tunsisa on the 12th may, till sun as that's when the check in on line opens. but I will get it done , no problem.

.....a printer can be bought for as little as £29 and thats scan/ copy and print , even a wireless one is only £49 , if you can't afford a printer then can you really afford to book a flight ?

I don't feel that just because you decide to book online you should then be forced to have to then further add to the cost of the flight by having to purchase a printer (if you don't already have one) and then use your own ink which as was mentiond on TV tonight as working out at around £1500 a litre.

'''if you can't afford a printer then can you really afford to book a flight ?'' really

Ok , if you book with another airline , charter or scheduled you will probably pay a lot more than booking with a LCC and the difference will be more than the price of a printer , no one is forcing any one who they book with , we all have a choice and personal preferences of who we choose to fly with , and from the amount of EJ flights there are and the fact they fly from many UK airports which gives many who wish to use their regional airports a real choice they prove to be popular , despite their terms and conditions .

Regards the price of ink , how many pages does a litre of ink produce ? Even saying a cartridge cost £50 ( which sounds very high) that would buy you 30 cartridges ( 30 x £50 is £1500) I think printing out a boarding card would equal pence

No doubt with the ever increasing popularity of iPhones most people will send their boarding card to their phone for scanning , thus saving tonnes of paper ( and trees ) and expensive ink .

It's worth remembering that 80% of EJ customers currently do online checkin and EJ are wanting to move over a system whereby everyone does , at this moment passengers can still get boarding cards printed at the airport for free .

I find online booking and check-in extremely convenient for the trips I do on a fairly regular basis.

As for the printing of boarding passes, are there really that many people who don't have easy access to a printer, either of their own, at work or that of a friend/relative? I can't believe there are. I don't have a printer but I either use the one at work or go to my Mum's and use hers. It's not as though I'm asking to use an entire cartridge of ink a month.

when they get you to self tag your bag that could be interesting

It's already here. On a flight on an Australian airline (Pacific Blue, I think) we checked in and reserved seats online, then at Melbourne airport put our cases onto one of 6 weighing m/c's, scanned our boarding cards and attached the printed labels to the cases, then simply handed them over to the luggage desk. Took about 5 mins in total. No queues, no waiting around.

Yes, Pippy, there are plenty of people out there who don't even have easy access to the Net let alone a printer:

http://www.21stcenturychallenges.org/60-seconds/what-is-the-digital-divide/

It's very easy for those of us who have kept up with the technology to assume that everybody else has as well. In my experience there are a good many people like my parents out there. People who retired long before we all had to get used to having a PC on our desks, people who retired while there were still Typing Pools - remember them? You probably after be over 50 to do so but we're still here! Yes, my parents are in their 80s but not ready to live a housebound life but also not wanting to learn a whole new set of skills or spend out on new equipment just so that they can book a flight. People who think that a phone is for making telephone calls on and don't want to have buy a new expensive phone and learn how to use it just so that they can board a flight, especially when their faithful old Knokias do everything they have needed them to do so far. In fact it's being frugal in that way that enables them to make their pensions stretch so that they can still afford holidays.

As I said before, my brother and I have become unpaid call centre staff for many airlines because we now do all that for them but that in itself creates anxieties for them. Given rules about not checking in on-line more than 14 days beforehand, they worry about whether their boarding passes from us will arrive in time, what happens if they get lost in the post, will there be time to re-send them etc? But the thing that has taken them the most time to get used to is no longer being able to be independent and to have to rely on us doing the booking etc for them. One of their neighbours has recently contacted me to say that, having realised how anxious my parents were about whether details would reach them in time through the post, that they were very happy for me to forward e-tickets and boarding passes etc to them and they would print them out for them. My parents are grateful for the offer and I will do this in future but I know that they are also struggling with this further reduction in their independence and dealing with their feelings of becoming doddery old people who have to rely more and more on others for things they used to be in control of themselves.

We seem to be slowly drifting into a situation where access to more and more services and goods are only accessible to those with easy access to and knowledge of how to use IT and the Net. It's not just about the cost, Andy, and I think that it's very glib to say that if they can't afford to buy a printer, much less an iPhone, should they really even be spending their money on a flight ticket!

SM

I agree with Sma

no one is forcing any one who they book with , we all have a choice and personal preferences of who we choose to fly with

That's not strictly true if you're going to exclude a percentage of a generation who are baffled by technology and they neither own a computer or a printer.

I'm what is referred to as a silver surfer, I can do quite a few tasks on the computer, including making videos, but I always think of it being similar to owning a car- I can drive a car, park it and wash it, but if it breaks I can't mend it, and neither can I mend a computer when it goes wrong.- I know beggar all about computers and I have to rely on my oldest lad to set things up and sort it out, and sometimes it gets to the point of feeling guilty asking him.

My kids bought me my first computer for one of those birthdays where they are completely stuck on ideas for a present. My OH is 71 years old and he absolutely hates technology, and he wouldn't know how to switch my computer on - he doesn't want to know because he can carry on living his life and doing all the tasks he did before it was deemed necessary to own a computer.
Would I have gone out and bought a computer without having a son who can fix it,? I doubt it very much.

I don't want a phone that sings and dances, I just want a phone that allows me to phone, send texts and an added bonus is having a built in camera.
I detest DD's and we can manage quite well without on-line banking. we are in no hurry, we have all day!

I hate the way old folks are being ignored and no consideration shown to them when companies make changes, but when it comes to airlines, who are the people who put bums on seats all year round,? well it ain't you young uns, that's for sure.
Sad that technology has reduced the value of old people, because it has rendered their skills and fact knowledge less valuable to younger folks.

Sanji

I think it was less than 20 years ago when EJ launched in the UK , and I remember they had their phone number plastered along the side of the plane , people phoned up to make their booking , I bet they or any of us would never have realised that in just a few years at least 80% and up to nearly 90% would be checking in online . I think that it would grow itself to 100% in a short time , it just that EJ are pushing it along so they can completely move to a new procedure to run their business more effectively and efficiently and keep their costs down which means fares as low as possible for passengers .
Of course when changes happen some people find it difficult , but the mass majority of their passengers have created the way forward themselves by using on line checkin , it's them who have decided it is a more efficient way , they are just doing what their customers want , and if its the older people who put bums on seats then they must be doing it this way also because the figure would be nowhere near 80% otherwise .

I also think its wrong to say older people are baffled by technology , I agree that they might be anxious at the pace of technology , perhaps we all are in that sense , but my mum who is 73 ( which is not old, 70s is not old these days ) is quite adept with technology , luckily she did typing at school which makes her a whizz on a keyboard compared to my one finger tapping , she even has a phone with a qwerty keyboard to bang out her texts , she loves her amazing 3 in 1 printer which helps her produce high quality work as she does admin for the groups she's involved in , the only thing in her life that affects her independence is she doesn't drive and this upsets her , having to rely on family and friends in fact by using online shopping like amazon is a godsend to her , being able to do online banking means she can see how much money she has rather than waiting and worrying and having to make a journey to the bank and find out . I think that technology makes her life easier , we can keep in touch when I'm on holiday by email , she is always emailing her friends and brothers/sisters , they range in age from 69 to 80 and all have computers and printers , I'm not saying they all " love" technology but they can see it is a part of everyday life and it has benefits .