News

Common-use self service-kiosks may be solution to airline check-in load

March 16, 2005

Economist.com: According to a survey carried out by SITA, airlines expect a majority of their passengers to be using kiosks for check-in by 2008. On busy routes packed with frequent travelers, kiosks are already so popular that it is necessary to queue up to use them.

Rather than installing more kiosks all over the place to handle peak demand, it makes more sense to switch from airline-specific kiosks to shared ones, which can handle passengers from several airlines. This makes it easier to scale check-in capacity to meet demand, and enables even small airlines to offer self-service check-in.

Such shared machines, which conform to a standard drawn up by IATA, are known as "common-use self-service" kiosks. The first CUSS kiosks to serve multiple airlines were introduced last April in Toronto by SITA. Passengers are presented with a common welcome screen, select an airline, and that airline's own check-in software then pops up.

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