Thomas Cook Online check-in or not?

sillygoose

Hi,

Off from Brum airport with Thomas Cook on Monday, never been with them before always just book flights & accommodation ourselves so a couple of questions please.

We usually just go to the airport quite early for holidays and check in as normal but TC offer online check-in 24 to 48 hours.

I sounds like I get to print our own boarding cards when doing it online and at arrival at the airport there is a bag drop counter somewhere, is that likely to be swamped? in which case we might as well just check in early as normal.

Presume the bag drop desk do the labels for your bags, you then just head for security?

It also says seats are allocated automatically.. anyone had any experience of this, is it fairly smart? we are 2 adults 2 kids and have always been seated close together by the check in desk person as long as we were early, does the online check-in try to group families?

The reason I ask is I don't want to start the process only to find its put us different ends of the plane and its too late, I would prefer to stick with plan 'B' and go to normal check-in and talk to a human.

Thanks.

balletshoes

i would always check in online and use bag-drop if possible - you could always start the check-in online process and if you don't like the seats you are given and can't change them online, just don't complete the online check-in.

Its up to you at the end of the day - whichever way I've checked in, online beforehand, or arrived early to check in at the airport - as a family we've always been seated together.

sillygoose

balletshoes wrote: »

i would always check in online and use bag-drop if possible - you could always start the check-in online process and if you don't like the seats you are given and can't change them online, just don't complete the online check-in.

thanks, I was worried that by the time it told you your allocated seats it was too late?

balletshoes

sillygoose wrote: »

thanks, I was worried that by the time it told you your allocated seats it was too late?

no, its not - you should get a final "submit" option or similar, to finish the online process and print off your boarding cards.

skippyste

Would definitely suggest checking in online if you can. As above you'll have one more stage after seat selection. Even if there was a seat problem they can be changed at the airport.

Anatidaephobia

Definitely check in online and see what seats it offers you.

When my parents were flying back from their holiday this summer, there was a family who checked in at the airport and were given separate seats because that's all that was left (presumably most of the other travellers had already checked in online).

There was then an announcement on the plane that it couldn't take off because the children were seated away from their parents and that was against the airline's policy. They required volunteers to swap seats otherwise the plane would not be able to take off at all (queue an awkward silence where everyone tried to avoid eye contact so they didn't have to give up their seats!).

sillygoose

All done thanks, all seated together. There was one more stage after seeing which seats were selected so it was safe to try it out first.

Craftily it put up a warning that we had not selected all our seats on the way through to the finish. It was referring to the return flight seats which could only be selected for an extra cost - erm no thanks!