Why do we still need to check-in for a civil commercial flight?

I agree with you Vladimir, it seems to be a useless procedure. I also agree this is entirely irrelevant for aircraft loading considerations. The likelihood of me showing up (or changing the ticket last minute due to illness or whatever) doesn’t change at all once I’ve clicked the “check-in” button on the smartphone and received the Passbook barcode ticket on the phone.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned here yet is that upon check-in (be it “for real” at the counter as a sign-post or within the app as an additional tick box) for each flight you need to acknowledge that you’ve read and understood the limitations of what you can take onboard (in terms of dangerous goods etc.). I don’t know if this is a legal requirement. And surely there must be other ways to ensure this than via the obsolete check-in procedure.

The only issue with “gate counting” is overbooking – also a reason to close the flight in advance and figure out which of the yelling businessmen in dapper suits that threaten to sue you can get on and / or be upgraded.

@Patrick – have you actually ever loaded an airplane?

It also keeps overbooking issues away from airside.

Vladimir wrote:

You cannot check in with the nice ladies in Zurich for a Swiss flight any more.

Good to know that next time I have to travel from Zürich! At the German airports you can still check in face-to-face…

They don’t issue more boarding passes than there are seats.

To explain the relevance to loading – cargo is palletized / ULD loaded. Very little is done as bulk. So if you have say 800kg of underload you can put your 800kg cargo pallet on. But if a passenger shows up and your underload drops to 700kg you have to leave the whole pallet / ULD behind as you cannot start undoing the nets and splitting the consignment and redoing the cargo manifest then and there.

Please read what I wrote earlier. The point is where you deal with it and how you deal with bags.