Airlines Must Use Tools To Speed Boarding

<B>Airlines Must Use Tools To Speed Boarding</B>

Expediting the process of identifying and boarding passengers is an uphill battle for the airlines. In 2000, for the ninth consecutive year, the industry carried a record number of domestic passengers, with little or no room at many popular airports for a corresponding expansion of ticket counter space or boarding gates.

Passengers arriving at airports find themselves waiting for increasingly long periods of time to check baggage and obtain boarding passes. Operational delays caused by aircraft waiting for passengers stuck in queues compound the problem, delaying subsequent flights elsewhere in the system and often causing cancellations.

Airlines are attacking the problem by attempting to reduce the number of customers that are forced to wait in line at a ticket or gate counter. To do so, airlines are introducing technology that offers flyers the ability to print their own boarding passes and avoid the long lines. Passengers can obtain their boarding passes and receipts from self-service kiosks upon arrival at many airports, or over the Internet before leaving for the airport.

Some airlines offer kiosks that provide a range of additional services that must otherwise be handled by an agent, such as the ability to check luggage, select seat assignments, add a frequent flyer number, and purchase tickets and upgrades. Delta Air Lines and US Airways kiosks pay special attention to their corporate customers by applying negotiated discounts to tickets purchased on their shuttle routes.

It is the kiosks of Northwest Airlines, however, that provide passengers with possibly the most welcomed functionality: automatic rebooking and issuing new boarding passes in the event that a flight is canceled. According to Jackie Astleford, director of e-commerce at Northwest, other airline kiosks require passengers booked on a canceled flight to wait in line to see an agent. Northwest kiosks seamlessly issue a new boarding pass, thereby reducing long lines, customer dissatisfaction and further operational delays.

Continental and Alaska Airlines lead the industry in kiosk ubiquity. Both have installed the machines in nearly every domestic airport they serve, as well as other locations where their customers might be found--Alaska has placed kiosks in hotels, parking lots and rental car facilities, and Continental even has installed one in Houston City Hall.

Last year, Alaska and then Northwest expanded the checkin process even further, enhancing their Web sites to enable their customers to select a seat and print their domestic boarding passes from home and business computers without any special software or hardware. The service is available less than 24 hours and more