Alaska Airlines To Enforce 50-Minute Check-In Rule—Why The New Airport Trend Means More Waiting, Less Traveling – View from the Wing

Alaska Airlines has increased the amount of time that you are required to check-in before your flight. For domestic flights you now need to check-in 50 minutes before your flight. And, if you’re checking bags, those much also be checked in 50 minutes before your flight. That’s an increase of 10 minutes from the previous 40 minutes.

Internal documentation that I’ve reviewed suggests this won’t actually start being enforced until Tuesday, October 29th. And of course there are some airports and situations (like checking a pet) where even earlier check-in is required.

Even as Alaska moves increasingly to automate the check-in and drop off process they’re requiring passengers to show up earlier and earlier.

And they’re not the only one. Over the summer United Airlines updated its contract of carriage, publishing requirements that doubled the amount of time you’d have to check-in before your flight although they did not actually start enforcing this. They said the change was to “allow for possible future changes.”

For domestic flights (with or without checked bags) United’s contract of carriage requirement is to check-in at least 60 minutes prior to departure. That increased from 30 minutes – a literal doubling.For international flights (with or without checked bags) United’s contract of carriage requirement is to check-in at least 75 minutes prior to departure departure. This is increased from 60 minutes.

Passengers are regularly told that they need to show up at the airport 3 hours before their flight. This is a massive failure that costs us $79 billion per year. Yet somehow this isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?

The lengthened times for showing up at the airport mean that it no longer even makes sense for many people to take shorter flights. The time it takes to get through security, make it through the airport, and board planes earlier and earlier is wasted time. Instead of getting more efficient, we’re queuing more and wasting precious time. And that doesn’t even count the time spent waiting at baggage claim or busing to rideshare and rental car lots at the other end of the journey.

Air travel is supposed to be about making it from one place to another as quickly as possible. It seems as though we’ve forgotten this.