QuickCheck? Not!

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icarus

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Feb 15, 2005
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I got to try out an interesting experiment on Sunday, flying Qantas MEL - CBR with a couple of colleagues, following a weekend meeting.

My colleagues only had hand luggage and aren't FF.

I needed to check luggage (I'm sick of surrendering nail scissors!) and am, of course, FF.

All of our tickets had been booked through the office. This meant I could use my FF card to access the QuickCheck kiosk, but my colleagues had to go and queue to check in the regular way.

So, I used the QuickCheck kiosk to check in, and then discovered to my dismay that there was quite a long queue for the bag drop. My colleagues spent a few minutes trying to access the kiosk and then went to queue at the formal check in. So they joined the check-in queue a few minutes after I joined the bag drop queue.

In the event, we reached the front of our respective queues at exactly the same time. Meaning that the ordinary check-in was the faster option!

What seemed very odd to me was that the process at the front of the bag drop queue seemed almost identical to the ordinary check in process.

So what's the point?

I've used QuickCheck with reasonable satisfaction when travelling without luggage, but for someone with bags to check it seems completely pointless.

PS, danielh, I also saw the Citibank 10K point offer and regret now that I didn't stop; I assumed I'd be able to get details and sign up online. Looked good, but I don't like to commit to those things without some thinking music.
 
QuickCheck - it's a marketing term to give the feeling of quick. How to convince the customer it's faster and make the customer do most of the work!
 
My experience in MEL is that Quick Check does not really save any time. In other cities it does seem to work better, but I am not sure why this is. Must be something different in the way that MEL is laid out or something
 
In one way, it stands to reason that many pax on Cityflyer routes will be FF and QP members and that they will want to avail themselves of the "Quickcheck", thus lengthening the queues. Regardless of where I have been flying (and I always have baggage to check in) I have always found speedy service at the Business/QC Check in counter. With a polite enquiry I have also been luck in requesting seating.
 
The thing is, your collegues did not have baggage to check ... you did. This is amost always slower.

A couple of things about this and "quick check":

- If you have luggage you can quick check at any machine, then join the bag drop queue armed with your BP. This may or may not help depending upon the airport.

- Your collegues should have still been able to use Qucik-Check. All the needed would be their Amadeus booking reference which should have been on any e-ticket itinerary/reciept provided by "the office". In which case they would probably have been faster than you.
 
serfty said:
- Your collegues should have still been able to use Qucik-Check. All the needed would be their Amadeus booking reference which should have been on any e-ticket itinerary/reciept provided by "the office". In which case they would probably have been faster than you.
You can also use the credit card that was used to purchase the ticket. So if charged to a corp card or personal card, just insert the card as you would your FF card etc.

This also works for many other airline's kiosk check-in. I used my Diners Club card onto which my DONE4 had been charged for QF QuickCheck as well as AA's kiosk check-in. All very easy.
 
Robert Barlow said:
In one way, it stands to reason that many pax on Cityflyer routes will be FF and QP members and that they will want to avail themselves of the "Quickcheck", thus lengthening the queues. Regardless of where I have been flying (and I always have baggage to check in) I have always found speedy service at the Business/QC Check in counter. With a polite enquiry I have also been luck in requesting seating.

This was Sunday, around noon, so I think there were fewer business travellers than usual. Absolutely no complaints about my seating (front row of economy) or the courtesy of the service once I got to the front of the queue. I just thought the kiosk and bag drop was not really quick at all and seemed to offer no advantage to getting in the normal queue. (Incidentally, the QP queue would have been much faster than QuickCheck - my colleagues were in the pleb line).
 
serfty said:
The thing is, your collegues did not have baggage to check ... you did. This is amost always slower.

Actually, I don't think it made any difference here. The point is, we were in different queues, and it wouldn't have taken any longer than my colleagues to get to the front of the ordinary check-in queue whether they had baggage or not. Surely?

serfty said:
A couple of things about this and "quick check":

- If you have luggage you can quick check at any machine, then join the bag drop queue armed with your BP. This may or may not help depending upon the airport.

Well, this was sort of the whole point of my post. That's exactly what I did. My point is that it took longer to get to the front of the bag drop queue than it took my colleagues to get to the front of the economy check-in queue.

serfty said:
- Your collegues should have still been able to use Qucik-Check. All the needed would be their Amadeus booking reference which should have been on any e-ticket itinerary/reciept provided by "the office". In which case they would probably have been faster than you.

Absolutely they would have been much faster than me - of course! - if they just used the kiosk and I used the kiosk plus bag drop. That couldn't be more obvious. I'm trying to point out that the bag drop queue took longer than the economy check-in queue. That's all.
 
icarus said:
Actually, I don't think it made any difference here. The point is, we were in different queues, and it wouldn't have taken any longer than my colleagues to get to the front of the ordinary check-in queue whether they had baggage or not. Surely? ...
This proves the point that Qantas is trying to encourage people to employ QuickCheck; You can save heaps of time when using it especially if you have no checked luggage. (Perhaps Qantas are trying to discourage the use of checked luggage.. surely not!
icarus said:
... Well, this was sort of the whole point of my post. That's exactly what I did. My point is that it took longer to get to the front of the bag drop queue than it took my colleagues to get to the front of the economy check-in queue. ...
See previous posts to this thread by others in regard to CBR. Note that for me in MEL the only time I used Quick Check bag drop, it had a special line for J/SG/WP etc.
icarus said:
... Absolutely they would have been much faster than me - of course! - if they just used the kiosk and I used the kiosk plus bag drop. That couldn't be more obvious. I'm trying to point out that the bag drop queue took longer than the economy check-in queue. That's all.
No worries then. That gets back to to root of your OP (perhaps Qantas really are trying to discourage checked luggage :shock: )
 
Could be ... or perhaps they're just trying to hard to make QuickCheck a complete alternative to old-style check in?

I think QuickCheck is actually great if I'm travelling without luggage, as I usually am out of CBR, and I haven't had any real trouble getting decent seats. Though I must say I have noticed that quite a lot of the seats shown as unavailable at the kiosk are mysteriously empty once we're in the air. And anyway, CBR - SYD and CBR - MEL are such short trips that even a bad seat is not such a terrible hardship.

The up-side at MEL this trip was that the QP dragons seem to have mellowed a bit, and let me bring both my colleagues in, instead of making one languish outside while I trawled the club for someone I knew who might comp them. It might have helped that the bar wasn't open yet, but still, it was a nice surprise.
 
Will be interesting to see what happens when Online Checkin is rolled out. Will the QuickCheck bag queus grow even more?
 
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I flew out of Perth on Monday the 24th, and when I walked into the terminal the queue to drop off quick checkin luggage was huge, and there were queues for the machines. I walked past this mess to the QP/J checkin and waited behind 2 other pax and was served within minutes. Saved approx 15 to 20 minuites
 
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