News

Check in with Air Canada kiosks

March 27, 2002

EDMONTON, Alberta - Air Canada has expanded its self-service Express Check-in kiosks to Edmonton International Airport's domestic check-in area.

The airline says that kiosks reduce check-in wait times by 80 percent. During a typical business day, more than 10,000 customers use the check-in kiosks.

Eight Express Check-in kiosks are available in the domestic check-in area along with special baggage drop-off counters for customers with checked baggage. To promote the new kiosks, Air Canada is offering 250 Aeroplan miles when checking in using the self-service Express Check-in kiosks in Edmonton between May 1 and July 31, 2001.

The bilingual check-in kiosks include touch sensitive screens, boarding pass printers and card readers. Any customers with a valid reservation can use the kiosk by inserting their magnetic stripe Aeroplan card or a major credit card. Customers can select seats using interactive seat maps, stand by for earlier flights, request upgrades (if eligible), obtain boarding passes for connecting flights, and select the Frequent Flyer program to receive their miles.

The kiosk displays instructions and prints out a bar-coded boarding pass. A virtual Express Check-in kiosk is demonstrated on Air Canada's Web site.

Many airlines have installed self-service kiosks. American Airlines recently announced the installation of 30 self-service kiosks, known as OneStop. It plans to install more than 300 of the machines, developed by Sabre.

Continental Airlines plans to add 250 machines to the 332 self check-in stations it already has in 63 U.S. airports during the next year. Its machines are made by Kinetics, a Lake Mary, Fla.-based kiosk maker.

In March United Airlines announced plans to install 800 self-service kiosks at 25 airports in the United States by the end of 2001. Another airline, Northwest, plans to have 250 self-service check-in kiosks installed in airports across the United States by the end of this year, and the Alaska Air Group has added 372 ITMs to airports, hotels, parking facilities, and rental car agencies.

Air Canada has as many as 126 self-service Express Check-in kiosks in major airports across Canada. The Express Check-in kiosks have recently been honored with the "Best of Show Solution Award" at the 2000 Gala Banquet of the Canadian Information Productivity Awards (CIPA).