Southwest To Test Curbside Baggage Check-In System Will Allow Ticketless Passengers To Bypass Counter

Southwest Airlines next month will begin testing a system that for the first time will make curbside baggage check-in available to passengers traveling without printed tickets.

Southwest, which introduced ticketless travel in limited markets last September, became the first major U.S. airline to offer ticketless travel on all its flights in January. The option has proven very popular. Already about 30 percent of Southwest’s passengers are flying without the benefit of a paper ticket.

But for travelers who don’t, or can’t carry, their bags on board with them, much of the attraction to ticketless travel has been lost because of a Federal Aviation Administration rule designed to keep terrorists from planting a bomb on a flight. The FAA requires airlines to confirm that people who check baggage for a flight actually have bought a ticket for that flight.

In practice, that has meant that ticketless passengers needing to check their bags have had to go to the ticket counter - which often means having to stand in a slow-moving line. At the ticket counter, an agent can check the traveler’s identity and make certain the traveler is listed on a given flight’s passenger manifest.

“Now, our skycaps will be able to use hand-held computers to check a flight manifest and confirm that a ticketless passenger is, in fact, scheduled to be on a particular flight,” said Charles Zug, Southwest’s director of marketing automation and business development.

“Once that’s confirmed, the skycap will be able to check the passenger’s bags right their at the curb. And the ticketless passenger will be able to go straight to the gate, bypassing the ticket counter completely. We think that’ll make ticketless travel even more attractive.”

And making ticketless travel more popular is important to cost-conscious Southwest. Zug said Southwest already is saving about $25 million on annualized basis because 30 percent of the carrier’s passengers aren’t issued paper tickets.

Beginning July 15, Southwest’s skycaps at Dallas’ Love Field, Houston’s Hobby Airport, and Oakland International Airport will be issued powerful, wireless, hand-held computers about the size of a thick novel to check in the bags of ticketless travelers.

The hand-held computers, which are the equivalent of a personal computer running on an Intel 486 microprocessor, will run a specially-designed program based on the popular Microsoft Windows program platform. Skycaps will use a special pen, or stylus, to touch symbols and letters displayed on the computer screen.

Zug said he expects the test of the hand-held computers will be expanded to include the 13 busiest airports served by Southwest. And if all goes well, the hand-held computer system could spread systemwide on Southwest before year’s end, he said.