Better to check in closer to flight date?

Pollycat

MyRealNameToo said:

GibbsRule_No3. said:

Rather confused (unless it is due to just doing long haul flights) I usually get an invite to check-in on line as soon as the previous days flight leaves, never checked in before 24 hours. Not sure what check-in early does towards where my small overhead bag goes. All the 1st, BC and people with young children or disabilities usually get boarded first, so are they the ones stuffing bags where they should not?

Main benefit of early check in is being able to select your seats if you haven't paid to select them at booking. Some airlines link this to membership status too though like BA Bronze you can select them a week in advance whereas Silver and Gold can do so at point of purchase. 

It doesn't work with TUI & JET2.

If you don't pay to select your seats, the airlines allocate them for you.

brianposter

Things have changed as airlines now offer seat selection as a package with luggage at the time of booking. The result is that the selection of available seats becomes significantly restricted at a very early stage in the booking period.

TheShape

You could try the check-in late strategy in the hope that not too many people were willing to stump up the extra cash for an extra-leg room/exit row seat and that's all that's left when you check in.  Had success with that a few times on Ryanair flights.  Perhaps a risky game in case your flight is oversold.

BFBW

Tryingtoassist said:

I read some while ago that it's safer to check in close to your flight date, rather than as soon as check in opens. This is because an airline refused to refund a passenger for their flight after they became ill and couldn't fly - the airline said that having checked in, they had entered a contract to take the flight.

Last week I saw MSE advising passengers to check in with Ryanair as soon as you could, to ensure you sat near your carry-on bag.  Have things changed now?

thanks.

Those are two different issues. If you check in, but don't fly, you become a 'no show' and therefore are subject to conditions under that clause. Whereas if you haven't checked in and your ticket is refundable, you still have the option to get a refund, as long as it's within any quoted time limit. Even if you have checked in, if you can get them to undo the check-in, in time, you can still get a full refund. Depends on how deftly you step  
Ryanair is a different animal. I'll leave that to the Ryanair experts to explain.

NoodleDoodleMan

Pollycat said:

MyRealNameToo said:

GibbsRule_No3. said:

Rather confused (unless it is due to just doing long haul flights) I usually get an invite to check-in on line as soon as the previous days flight leaves, never checked in before 24 hours. Not sure what check-in early does towards where my small overhead bag goes. All the 1st, BC and people with young children or disabilities usually get boarded first, so are they the ones stuffing bags where they should not?

Main benefit of early check in is being able to select your seats if you haven't paid to select them at booking. Some airlines link this to membership status too though like BA Bronze you can select them a week in advance whereas Silver and Gold can do so at point of purchase. 

It doesn't work with TUI & JET2.

If you don't pay to select your seats, the airlines allocate them for you.

Indeed, and in theory you might get a seat that you would have been thinking about paying extra for in advance.

Not sure how that would pan out in practice though - unreserved seating allocation appears to be computer managed dark art to me !!!

jimi_man

Certainly with BA, if you check in very late and the flight is oversold then you are at slightly more risk of being bumped - especially if you have no status. 

Came back from Ibiza a few days ago on BA and we were reasonably quickly on the plane (Group 2) and a lot of the luggage space had gone where we were sitting. And it was one of the older planes where you can't stow it sideways. I got my suitcase and rucksack in the locker, same for my wife and it was just about full. No coats fortunately. 

Tim_L

So usually it's best to check in late on low cost carriers as they tend to give the worst seats away first. That's quite a well known travel hack now, so lots of people doing it, so there are diminishing returns. There is a vanishingly small but existing risk of checking in late and finding yourself on standby, that's happened to me on Wizz, but you'd get IDB compensation as a bare minimum if you didn't get a seat.

Being checked in makes no difference to a sickness issue. Some airlines (BA for example) are sometimes sympathetic and issue a voucher to redate with fare difference payable. LCCs, no chance unless you've bought some sort of flexibility product which is almost never worth it on aggregate.  You need to be aware of fare rules. And yes, travel insurance is cheap and gives some protection, but you need to understand exactly what it protects against and how the excess works.

As a very very frequent flyer, I tend to check in as early as I'm allowed unless I'm trying to game a seat selection. I do also generally travel very light indeed and don't take a rollaboard, I have a rucksack that meets the LCC requirements which I can live out of for a week or so perfectly well. It's quite unusual that you can't stash a rucksack between rollers once boarding is complete.