..idle writings from an idle mind..

Finally managed to get around to trying Qantas’ mobile check-in function that has been rolled out across their domestic network.

First attempt at using it failed abysmally. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but for my flight MEL/BNE I got an error that it was unable to complete mobile check-in, so I had to resort to getting a boarding card at the airport.

The flight back BNE/MEL was a success — having already preselected my favourite economy seat a few days before, I went to the Qantas iPhone site and logged in to my account, selected the booking, tapped the check-in button and confirmed that I would not be carrying knitting needles on board. The end result was a SMS with a weblink which brought up a large 2D barcode (out of interest, it appears to be an Aztec Code), along with other basic flight details (name, status, seat, class, flight, date and so on).

At the airport, the phone is scanned at the gate. Apparently QF staff are under instruction to not touch the phone — you have to hold it under the scanner yourself. Scanning takes a second or so, and a docket with all of the relevant information gets spat out of a thermal printer.

There is a known gotcha in that mobile check-in doesn’t allow for seat selection — this would be a deal breaker for most (lucky dip seating anyone?), but those that have attained oneworld status with Qantas are able to select seats prior to check-in on the Qantas website.

The verdict? Surprisingly decent. If they could fix it such that seat selection is possible (and allow multiple attempts at checking in, in case you wanted to see if a better seat had become available), then I’d happily use this all the time. For now, I’ll stick to using it when I’ve been able to secure a good seat ahead of time.