Sometimes I wonder how much testing happens when companies roll out their products. The Delta check in kiosk is a pretty quick way to check in. Today as I was checking in and I was offered the ability to move to one of three earlier flights. As a Platinum – there is no change fee. My biggest concern was which seat would be available. I didn’t want to be sitting in at a window seat and my first class upgrade on both legs had already cleared.
As a passenger, I would like to see what seats are available before I make the decision to change my flights. I ended up having to ask one of the gate agents if they could look at the seat map to see what seats were available. Five minutes later, he said that though the kiosk had offered one of the earlier flights as an option, there was in fact no seats available on the connecting flight??
Rather than repeat this same process for the two other flights and because there was a pretty long line at this point, I went ahead and stuck with my original itinerary.
My suggestion to Delta – show me the seat map before allowing me to switch!
The kiosks are supposed to save time. So far, the few times I’ve traveled, they have added time. Checking in for international flights still requires the stamp by the agent so it’s 2 steps instead of one. Recently, in Lyon, France, the kiosk site was chaos. I used 3 different kiosks and not one of them worked right. One would not boot up, one would not switch from French to English and the 3rd would not recognize my passport. I ended up standing in a long line to have the single agent dealing with all the people who couldn’t get the kiosks to work. Maybe they’re ok for domestic travel but I kind of doubt it.
LOL. I would have switched to the earlier flight with no seats to score a bump.