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United Airlines has updated its cut-off times for checking in for flights and not in a good way. The Chicago-based carrier has made these times more restrictive in a move that sure to rattle some customers. Live and Let’s Fly broke the news around United’s latest policy change.
Currently, passengers can check into their flights beginning 24 hours before departure with cut-off times as follows:
- Domestic flights without checked bags: 30 minutes before
- Domestic flights with checked bags: 45 minutes before
- International flights (with or without checked bags): 60 minutes before
There were some exceptions to these rules with specific airports that required more time for one reason or another. The contract of carriage was updated on June 28th to show these new requirements:
- Domestic flights (with or without checked bags): 60 minutes before
- International flights (with or without checked bags): 75 minutes before
United has not updated the page with baggage terms yet and told Matthew at Live and Let’s Fly:
We’ve updated our Contract of Carriage to allow for possible future changes. However, at this time there has been no change to the check-in times on united.com. Any changes in check-in times will be posted there before they go into effect at the airport.”
This should keep the current requirements in place for some time, but it does provide a glimpse into United’s future plans. Delta is aligned with United’s current posted times. American is between 45 and 60 minutes.
Anthony’s Take: 99% of the time I check in well in advance (and often close to 24 hours just because I want my boarding pass settled). For those that wait until the last minute, this is going to pose some problems.
(Image Credits: United Airlines.)
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2 comments
What updating the CoC also does is allows them to more easily set more restrictive times at a location. I fought when a station manager at another airline for months to get moved from a 30 to a 45 minute cutoff for my station because in the morning TSA could not physically screen the number of passengers departing unless the passengers arrived spread over a longer period. We were commonly leaving 15-20 people behind per flight before 8am as were other airlines (not fair to the other 200 who were on board to now compromise their connections from Florida to Caribbean or Central America).
Setting the baseline at this new default allows United to quickly make things more restrictive in case by case basis. You may or may not be surprised how much of a pain in the behind contract of carriage changes are because you have to have a paper back up version available any location where a passenger can check in. So lots of updating even if it’s a change that doesn’t apply locally. I’m pretty sure the only people who ever ask to see this copy are DOT inspectors who will ding you in Palm Beach if the gate copy doesn’t have the page updated that says cut off is 45 minutes at Lihue.
Some airports have different cut offs. For instance Denver Airport has a 45 minute cut off for all domestic flights. So check your airports too not just the airlines.
Happy Travels