News

Airline check-in kiosks to launch at Las Vegas hotels

July 20, 2004

LAS VEGAS - Local hotels will offer McCarran International Airport's SpeedCheck computerized check-in kiosks soon, according to an article in the Las Vegas Sun.

Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker said the $2 million high-tech system that prints boarding passes for the passengers of 13 airlines serving the airport has been part of the solution to minimizing long waits lines in the post-9/11 era.

Walker said that one of the solutions to eliminating a wait in line at an airline ticket counter, he said, was to develop SpeedCheck, a system Walker hopes will do for travel what ATMs have done for banking.

Passengers pass a credit card or frequent flier card through a reader and select the airline they're flying. The computer identifies the flight and prints a boarding pass.

McCarran's SpeedCheck is the only self-check in system that has multiple airlines on one system. Walker said other airports are looking into copying the McCarran system.
Walker said it's difficult to do a cost-benefit analysis for the system, since it's hard to quantify how much time and stress is relieved by removing people from lines.

Walker said his goal is to remove 10 percent of the people who wade through a ticket counter line with the system. About 650,000 passengers have used it since it became operational.
In addition to placing kiosks to print boarding passes at the resorts, Walker said he hopes to have personnel that can accept baggage and print bag tags when they check in. He said airlines that agree to be a part of the test must agree to hire a subcontractor to check bags for all the participating airlines and haul them to the airport.

"The normal hotel check-out time is around noon," Walker said. "If your flight doesn't leave until the evening, imagine how much time you could have doing other things, whether it's shopping, eating or gambling, if you already had your bags checked in and your boarding pass in hand."