Why do airlines encourage online check-in 24 hours before you arrive at the airport?
All airlines routinely overbook flights.
Consequently, they will go to great lengths to try and estimate how many sold seats will actually show up for the flight.
This is just another tool in their arsenal to estimate actual loads.
The more advance notice they have, the more efficiently they can deal with oversold seats, re-booking, fuel loads, etc.
All aircraft also have finite weight limitations which can actually affect how much fuel they can carry. This can be a genuine juggling act for smaller aircraft, as well as those that operate in hot climates. (Hot ambient air temperatures have a significant negative effect on aircraft performance).
For example, many long haul flights from Dubai, where temperatures are notoriously hot, are scheduling to depart during the morning hours before it gets too hot outside. If the flight should suffer a significant delay, it’s not uncommon for the Captain to order freight, passengers or fuel to be removed as the aircraft is now over it’s maximum allowable takeoff weight. Fuel is not only the most time-consuming to remove, it’s also the most risky as it shaves off tangible buffer time should any delays happen en route due to bad weather, heavy traffic, etc.
Image courtesy- Pixabay
24 hour advanced, online check-in also serves as a good reminder to some passengers who have not yet decided whether they intend to take the flight.
What I mean by this is that, even the most economical fares can be eligible for a partial refund right up until ~45 minutes prior to scheduled departure time.
If you don’t cancel by then, you eat 100% of the ticket cost.
TL;DR: Airlines feel more in control of a flight if they have more advanced notice of confirmed intentions to actually board the flight.
~ Paul Harris, Flown frequently on business for the past 40 years.
Primarily to increase their view into what the actual load factor will be for that particular flight and to smooth operations in general.
When someone checks in, it’s a commitment. Checking in at or just after 24 hours before flight tells the airline about how “firm” their load is on an airplane.
With that information, it can begin to make decisions about managing the open space on the aircraft for the next 24 hours. If a 737 with 160 seats has all seats booked but 10, 80% checked in 12 hours before departure, the revenue management team can price those last 10 seats accordingly to get them filled.
Each seat not filled is a revenue opportunity that expires once the door is closed. So filling it at some reasonable price is better than not filling it at all.
So a 24 hour check-in, presented as a convenience item to the passenger, really is about gaining insight on how “firm” the demand is for that flight.
Finally, getting people to check themselves in with boarding passes printed or captured on their smart phone reduces the need for gate agents to spend time checking in passengers. The airline saves a little bit of money on each flight. Since airlines have thousands of flights per day, even a $5 savings becomes huge. $5 x 5500 flights x 365 days = $10 million. Well worth the effort to save the money.
Instead of a hotel, look into reserving a home if traveling with a family, or a single room if alone. Websites like AirBnB can provide homes and private rooms from home owners who are renting them out, usually offering better accommodations than hotels.
Roll your clothes when packing. Instead of creating a folded pile in your suitcase, rolling allows you to fit more things in. Plus, you can even roll underwear and socks within your clothes for optimal space-saving.
Scan your passport, identification card, and itinerary and email them to yourself. This provides an extra copy of each in the event of loss or theft. As an iPhone user, once I email the documents to myself, I usually open the email on my iPhone and save them onto iBooks. This provides me with an offline record.
It’s important to remember to call your credit or debit card company before you leave to ensure that you have your card authorized for your foreign destination. This prevents them from suspecting suspicious activity.
Mark your baggage as fragile. This is a tip I learned a while ago from a friend who found it to be a great way to ensure that your baggage is handled correctly. Your luggage is kept at the top because of this, which will make it one of the first bags to be released.
Bring your own water bottle. Depending on the airline’s own policies regarding drink costs, the amount of times water is offered may not be to your liking. Having your own water bottle ensures that you have water when you want it. When they do come around, top off your bottle with what they give you.
Never underestimate the value of a fanny pack. Yes, they can be embarrassing and seemingly out of the mid-to-late 1980s, but trust me—every time I travel, even domestically, it has ensured that my valuables are safe, and it expedites security checks.
Splurge on Internet service if your flight is more than six-and-a-half hours long. You’ll thank me when you find that sparking conversation with your seat partner is harder than pulling teeth. Plus, you can complete work for the last time before you hit your destination.
Ensure that you have a pen before leaving home so you can complete customs forms. Fill the forms out when you get them, and ensure that your family members have theirs filled as well. People will clamour for your pen; flight attendants rarely have them.
20 minutes before you land, sprint for the bathroom. Usually when the seatbelt light comes on, I’ve found that you still have 15 minutes of leeway until you truly have to be seated. Use this opportunity to relieve yourself to prevent fighting for restrooms when you land.
Travel Hacks When You Arrive
Image courtesy-pixabay
Dart directly for baggage claim. It is amazing how many people seem to lollygag after landing. Save that for someplace else to save yourself time and to prevent any arguments with fellow travelers.
Use ATMs to get local currency. Using money converters in the airport usually come with their own fees and the exchange rates are a rip-off. ATMs always dispense local currency, of course, so use your debit or credit card and get your money there.
Ensure that you have Yelp downloaded for domestic travel in the US. This is a great city guide for both travelers and locals alike, and is best way to find the most amazing places to eat and sightsee.
Shop for groceries when you arrive. You don’t have to shop for a feast, but getting basics like water and a few snacks in local stores instead of at the hotel can save you a ton.
When in your room, remove only the necessities from your luggage. Trying to make yourself at home by taking out every pair of shoes and all of your toiletries will only make repacking a living hell, and it increases your chances of forgetting something when it’s time to go home.
Exploring Your New Location
Image courtesy-pixabay
Use guidebooks sparingly. I recommended Yelp because it allows you to discover a few places off the beaten path. Guidebooks only presents you with tourist spots; even those that advertised themselves as being off the beaten path.
Use the local language as much as possible. It reflects well not only on you, but also on Americans/your nationality in general. It shows you are willing to make the effort, which can work in your favor in some situations.
Have a souvenir list prepared, and stick to it. This will save you money and prevent you from purchasing something that “you’ll find someone to give to another time”.
Eat locally only. Save McDonald’s, if you have to eat it in any location, for when you’re home. Trying the local cuisine will save you more money and allow you to experience new and flavorful meals.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans” is a general saying that I like to translate it as, “don’t be a stubborn traveler, and get out of your comfort zone”. If a country advises modest dress, for example, follow through. It can even ensure your safety as a foreigner.
Travel Hacks for Returning Home
If you are a frequent traveler, live out of your toiletry bag and keep it packed. This will allow the packing process to be a bit easier and will prevent you from having to make expensive toiletry purchases if you forget something.
Use IFTTT when sharing traveling photos to make it seamless and easy. “Recipes” like sharing automatically to Dropbox or Evernote will allow you automatically to have a copy of your precious photos.
Unpack immediately when you enter the door. You may be tired out of your mind, but you’ll be glad you did it in the morning. Plus, it saves your luggage from smelling like soiled laundry.
For people who celebrate Easter, it’s not all bunnies and candy. In southern Mexico, the Catholic faithful begin Holy Week with an overnight procession. Good Friday in Australia has a more sedate feel, while in the Czech Republic, an old tradition is given a fresh spin. Peruvians in central Lima celebrate with a procession in which worshippers wear purple while carrying the “Lord of the Miracles.”
With a Centurylink Cable Internet plan, you can browse through a number of online sources (featuring a striking combination of both text and graphics) that detail the many benefits that travelling accrues for the sojourning subject
Human civilization, as a collective conception, has always been comprised of a multitude of races – along with their corresponding cultural codes that provide each denomination with its own distinctive vibrancy (against the backdrop of the whole). But all these races conform to the same species of Homo sapiens; indicating that they (by their natural design) are meant to intermingle with each other, and perhaps even cohabitate to produce interracial offspring. With a centurylink directv and Internet plan, you can surf through many online resources that detail the evolution of the species, and how different communities came to inhabit disparate pieces of land over time.
Travelling as More than Just a ‘Getaway’ Exercise
Travelling, of course, has always constituted the best mechanism available to the species to achieve this socially-charged end of ‘meeting each other’ – and its contemporary variant seems to have much to offer to people (in a seemingly unprecedented number of ways) on this important front.
Image courtesy- pexels.com
Whereas in the older days people had to rely on a combination of camels, horses, cattle and donkeys (and an entire range of livestock animals) to sojourn across large territorial distances, and make do with elongate wooden ships to contend against the sheer violence of the earth’s oceans and seas, modern-day man has many technological advantages at his disposal to alleviate the bulk of these concerns.
These expeditions (as they were usually filled with all manner of unexpected adventures) normally took several weeks and months to accomplish – making people only willing to make them if they wanted to settle in their destination permanently.
People nowadays have the luxury of travelling through incredibly fast airplanes and luxury ocean liners, which allow them to reach their intended earthly locations – no matter how spatially removed they may be from their current habitation spots – roughly in a matter of hours at best. And this drive towards increasing speeds (and lessening timeframes) has reaped in considerable benefits for the tourism industry at large, which intrinsically depends on these new-age transportation amenities for the success of its myriad of constituting commercial ventures.
As a lifelong traveler myself (one whose passport needs to be reapplied – for a fresh copy – after every couple of years), I have benefitted greatly from my journeys across the globe; and am continually left to marvel at how some people can still manage to remain disconnected from their larger earthly collectives.
With the Centurylink promotions (or some other such high-speed Internet provision), you can go through many news stories and articles that give vent to the narrow and myopic mindsets of the individuals who eschew any form of travelling or cross-cultural exchanges. As such, it is quite common for some (but not all) of these people to exhibit xenophobic tendencies against those individuals who hail from different sociocultural settings than theirs; deeming them to be ‘outsiders’.
An Experiential List (on the Benefits of Travelling)
In this post, I have tried to list some of these positives (as they have come to be consolidated in my life, since I first booked a plane ticket to Milan more than 15 years ago), in the hope that you – if you don’t much fancy straying a certain distance away from your home town – will become motivated enough to plan a trip of your own.
These pointers, which are both descriptive, and to a lesser degree prescriptive, total five in number.
And if you, by some fortunate stroke of luck, do end up becoming an avid traveler yourself, I hope you’ll get to experience the novelty that going to new places, and meeting a different set of people than the ones you’re used to, brings to your life…my earnest prayer for you!
The first benefit that I normally tend to associate with travelling (and which I make sure to start off my public speeches on the subject with) pertains to its unrivalled potential to open-up minds, and remove ill-conceived prejudices & misconceptions that people seem to have regarding other cultures and nationalities.
In my long series of interactions with all kinds of people (belonging to virtually all ethnic communities, and socioeconomic cadres within their narrow and/or globalized societal spheres), I have come to acknowledge that most people of exclusivist lot are generally immune to the normally mind-altering influence of facts and empirical evidence.
They’d much rather rely on their feelings (and other subjective criteria) to form their opinions; something for which direct & in-person communication with the alleged outsider proves to be a perfect fit or remedy.
I personally see this as the most commendable aspect of travelling.
Travelling is a great way to experience the beauty of nature, and the people who tend to make it more vibrant through their lived contributions. It makes one automatically appreciate (and romanticize) over the grand order of the Creator, or Intelligent Design – depending on their personal convictions.
This mode of sojourning not only opens up ones mindset in an expansive manner, it also tends to endow one with the feeling of actually having ‘lived’ and experienced what the world has to offer.
Image courtesy-pexels.com
When considered from a different angle, travelling also comprises one of the most powerful ways of seeking some creative inspiration. Since time immemorial, nature has been man’s greatest muse; with most artists trying to encapsulate its reflected glory on their respective canvases.
By witnessing the great and variable topographical features that are widespread everywhere one chances to gaze on this beautiful planet that we all call home, it becomes only a matter of projecting our received perceptions through the artsy medium of our choice into something concrete.
And creating a stellar masterpiece, thereafter.
For some people recovering from an illness, or the downright exhaustion that comes with living a mundane existence day after day, travelling to exotic and faraway locations can serve as a great panacea for the soul.
Not only does it usually succeed in soothing tired nerves, it also acts as a potent force for begetting some much-needed rejuvenation for the beleaguered individual – making him/her ready to face the onslaught of life’s inevitable challenges once again.
Lastly, travelling often comes about as a necessary endeavor for some people in search of gaining more lucrative employment opportunities elsewhere.
Nowadays, it is very common to find the local marketplace (and job sphere) saturated by a large number of professional workers looking to occupy some coveted position in a particular working place. In such cases, many qualified individuals choose to travel abroad, where they often end up attaining better employment opportunities than the ones made available in their home countries.
Checking Out Some Travelling Sites
Before setting out to travel, it is often a good idea to conduct some local research on travel-related online platforms like TripAdvisor and Travelocity (among many others) – in order to become cognizant of precisely what you may be in for in your travel chosen travel destinations.
Through the Centurylink Internet Customer Service, and the resulting signing-up of one of the said vendor’s acclaimed Internet plans, this task can be accomplished with considerable ease.
Stephen N. Mills is an entrepreneur, marketer, and writer. As San Francisco resident, he loves reading books and writing on different topics like SEO, Branding, Health and etc. That’s where he finds his inspiration to author in-depth guides that teach E-commerce store owners ways to manage, grow and scale their business. In a former life, Stephen co-founded a custom menswear company which generates 6-figures in annual revenue through its website and retail.
