One of the downsides of travelling is having to arrive at the airport so many hours in advance. As if this was not already burdensome enough, this summer has seen airports taken over by even bigger queues in a chaos that seems to continue to winter.
Besides the security and border checks, sometimes waiting in line to drop-off your baggage increases the waiting time even more. To make things easier for travellers, at least when it comes to the bags, Brussels Airport has introduced self-drop-off kiosks.
This summer, Brussels Airport introduced a new system to allow passengers to check in their baggage themselves at the airport. Using their boarding pass, passengers for short and medium haul destinations operated by Brussels Airlines and the other companies in the Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian), can now print out their own baggage label and check in their suitcase themselves.
For this, a new zone has been installed near check-in row 4, featuring 16 label kiosks and 6 bag drops where the suitcase is weighed and placed on the belt to the baggage hall. Agents of Brussels Airlines can help the passengers if assistance is desired.
The baggage drop-off offers significant time savings for passengers as more people can present their bags at the same time. Since more than 75% of the passengers of Brussels Airlines already check in at home and have their boarding pass with them, they can check in their suitcase and continue their journey quicker using this system. With this system, up to 400 passengers per hour can check in their baggage. Passengers can of course also still make use of the manned check-in desks.
This system was systematically deployed during the summer holidays and is now fully operational. During the months of July and August, already 35.000 suitcases, or almost 10% of the suitcases of the short and medium haul flights of the Lufthansa Group, were checked in using the baggage drop-off. This is an extensive pilot during which the system will be closely monitored, with a view to expansion possibilities in the future.
