How are you supposed to scan a boarding pass if there's no kiosk to print one? Are they expecting everyone to print them out at home? Surely not...
This news fills me with discomfort, in the same way that restaurants which lack menus do ("just scan our QR code, then scroll endlessly on your tiny screen!") Really not a fan of bottlenecking every service through smartphones, which are OK for killing time on light entertainment, but really suck for getting anything practical done.
As they mention in the article, 70% already have their boarding pass on their phone already. It’s actually much easier to add a boarding pass to your mobile wallet than it is to do check-in at the airport. Mostly because you get to skip the line and bustle at the airport and do it at your leisure.
And once it’s in your mobile wallet, a button to access it appears on your phone screen within a few hours of the flight. So it’s just one tap at the airport.
It’s really not a bottleneck, to be honest. It’s a big time-saver for me vs trying to remember where my paper boarding pass ended up.
I am one of those 30% and would like to remain in that group, which is the source of my concern. I don't have or want a mobile wallet (assuming that is a generic term for Apple Pay and whatever Google's version is).
Relevant portion about iPads vs kiosks. Big fan of doing more software in house!
> Any change on the kiosk, you’d have to work with a vendor and that takes about six weeks. With [iPads], we can roll out changes very quickly and it’s a very simple and good user experience.
That is nuts to read. One other dev and myself created the original system in-house for Alaska in 1999, it ran for years. Of course some C Suite genius out sourced it.
>It’s worth noting that Alaska is obviously aware that not everybody will be able to check in online. Agents will remain available for assistance, and Jain emphasized that travelers will continue to have this option.
So literally nothing is improving and it's just getting worse. You will still have kiosks, they will just now be limited functionality kiosks...Awesome!
As someone who's worked on "kiosks" in a very general sense, an iPad is infinitely nicer to use than any other piece of hardware being used for that purpose.
Kiosks tend to be really crappy hardware sold under the guise of being rugged, but are really run of the mill SoCs shoved in metal cases.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 44.4 ms ] threadBut this line jumped out at me:
> These bag drops will also mark the first time Alaska will use biometric data to authenticate travelers
That's a hard "no" from me. I don't want yet another company, with likely shoddy software and security, handling biometric data.
This news fills me with discomfort, in the same way that restaurants which lack menus do ("just scan our QR code, then scroll endlessly on your tiny screen!") Really not a fan of bottlenecking every service through smartphones, which are OK for killing time on light entertainment, but really suck for getting anything practical done.
And once it’s in your mobile wallet, a button to access it appears on your phone screen within a few hours of the flight. So it’s just one tap at the airport.
It’s really not a bottleneck, to be honest. It’s a big time-saver for me vs trying to remember where my paper boarding pass ended up.
> Any change on the kiosk, you’d have to work with a vendor and that takes about six weeks. With [iPads], we can roll out changes very quickly and it’s a very simple and good user experience.
>It’s worth noting that Alaska is obviously aware that not everybody will be able to check in online. Agents will remain available for assistance, and Jain emphasized that travelers will continue to have this option.
Kiosks tend to be really crappy hardware sold under the guise of being rugged, but are really run of the mill SoCs shoved in metal cases.