The impossible checked-baggage dream

By N.B. | WASHINGTON, D.C.

IT IS a pain to have to check in a bag when you're flying, and most business travellers try to stick to carry-on luggage. When it can't be avoided you can find yourself spending up to an hour waiting in line to drop off your bags and get the tags printed. That's time that could be better spent talking to clients, catching up on e-mails or reading The Economist.

Travellers already print their boarding passes at home (or simply use their smartphones). So why not allow flyers to print their luggage tags at home, too? That's the method Iberia Airlines is promoting. Instead of requiring specialised luggage-tag paper, Iberia allows customers to print the tags on regular paper, which they then fold up and put in a reusable plastic sleeve that they can pick up the at the airport. (Here's a video explaining the process.) The time saved is significant, and it probably saves Iberia money, too. With fewer flyers waiting in line to drop their bags, the airline won't have to employ as many desk agents.

Print-at-home luggage tags could lead to some problems with tags falling off and bags getting lost. But that happens with normal tags, too. And if the new programme proves popular, Iberia will have an obvious incentive to make it work as well as possible. In the meantime, too many airlines have yet to allow flyers to print their own luggage tags at the airport. Airport kiosks are perfectly capable of printing them, as well as boarding passes, and this is cheaper than training and paying human desk agents. All else being equal, most travellers prefer to talk to a desk agent. But faced with a choice between a short line for a kiosk and a long one for a person, many will pick the computer. Whether or not carriers make Gulliver happy by following Iberia's lead and broadening their print-at-home offerings, they should be investing in bag-check and boarding-pass kiosks. Checking bags will probably always be a hassle. But it doesn't have to be as bad as it is now.