News

Alaska Air unveils check-in kiosks at LAX

December 10, 2003

SEATTLE -- Alaska Airlines opened a high-tech check-in counter at Los Angeles International Airport.

The new system does away with the old bottleneck at the ticket counter and allows passengers to flow through check-in in two simple steps, according to a news release.

"By splitting the check-in process into two steps and using smart kiosks, we are able to process more customers at a time, consequently eliminating lines and wait times," said Ed White, Alaska's vice president of ground operations, in the release. Kinetics Inc. designed the self-service kiosks.

Alaska tested the system over the busy Thanksgiving holiday travel period. "We handled more than 5,500 passengers at LAX on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with little or no lines and minimal wait times," he said.

At step one, customers approach a bank of automated and customer-friendly check-in kiosks where they check-in, obtain a boarding pass and indicate if they have checked luggage. Passengers traveling on international flights can also have their passports scanned at this step with new automated passport readers.

At step two, customers approach a baggage podium, where an Alaska Airlines employee will scan their boarding pass and attach automatically generated bag tags. Customers traveling without luggage can skip this step. After that, customers can proceed directly on their way to the security checkpoint.

The project, part of Alaska's Airport of the Future initiative, took eight months and involved a major reconstruction of the airline's facility located at Terminal 3 at LAX.

Alaska unveiled a similar two-step check-in process at Anchorage International Airport in June 2002. The airline plans to implement similar programs at airports where facilities permit.