Alaska Airlines Ditching Airport Check-In Kiosks

I don't get it. This is hardly an advance for the passenger. Current kiosks can do what they are promoting the new ones to do. The new ones are a diminishment to some current passengers. The point being to reduce Alaska Air personnel. The comparison someone made to McDonald's is apropos.

thanks alaska airlines for thinking so carefully (not) about your passengers. On line this, on line that, such an inconvenience for many passengers. Does grehound bus have such an anti-customer bias???

I don't have an issue with providing customer the OPTION to do everything for themselves. I however do not want to take away those jobs, save the airline money on these crazy expensive tickets or do the work myself. I expect personal service when I pay for it. I did not see anything about a self service discount.

so if your not using the kiosk how do you get your bag tags?

The kiosk will be bag tag only. Alaska is also beta testing Permanent RFID tags for frequent flyers. I missed the opportunity to be in the first group but I am looking forward to the implementation. Alaska has always been a leader in customer service tech.

Oh great no humans at all? Can see this going bad already and no fix for it. Just like McDs all they have are humans so far putting the food in sacks soon that will be gone also.

I checked in @ DUB last fall and it was 100% self serve. There was a human available for help if summoned. Facial recognition, passport scan , bag tag print and affix, pay the fees , receive boarding pass and receipt , head to the gate. It was all self serve. The technology is there now.. The down size was the checkin lobby was huge.

re "the customers themselves will be responsible for having their bags scanned during drop off", Frontier already has this technology in place at some airports. I had the experience of successfully using this and thought it pretty cool. However, I also watched a number of passengers struggling with issues such as: after whisking the bag 10 feet up the conveyor belt, the bag comes back but with little explanation, thus requiring an attendant to help. There was one attendant for a dozen or so bagdrop stations, and many customers were waiting for her, poor thing. Hopefully that is just teething problems.