Virgin Australia offers new check-in experience as airline offers ‘major digital upgrade’ for travellers

Virgin Australia will soon reduce the amount of boarding pass scans required at check-in, in what the airline calls a major digital upgrade that should save travellers time at the airport.

Bag drop scanners will automatically recognise the bag without customers needing to enter prompts on the adjacent touch screen.

The airline’s app is also being updated to allow Gold, Platinum and Platinum Plus Velocity Frequent Flyers to change their flight on the day of travel; a feature currently allowed only by calling the customer call centre.

The changes to the app will also allow passengers to fly earlier in the day if operational reasons or weather conditions are forecast to upset flights later in the day.

Virgin Australia General Manager, Digital, Alex Plummer claims it’s another of the airline’s Australian-first initiatives on technology.

“Today’s update is a major step forward in our mission to be Australia’s most-loved airline; allowing customers to check-in, manage their booking and move through the airport in a way that’s never been done before by an Australian airline,” he said.

The Fly Earlier function has been offered in-app by Qantas for quite some time, but Virgin claims the Fly Ahead and Fly Later function is new for Australian airlines.

So too, it says, is the automatic scanning of bag tags at check-in that the airline says could cut check-in time by up to 50 per cent. Virgin says it came to that figure by analysing user times during a one-week trial at Mackay airport.

A dedicated Priority bag drop area will also be offered for Gold, Platinum and Platinum Plus frequent flyers as the airline tries to match its competitors in wooing big spending, regular travellers.

This rollout will be offered at Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Gold Coast, Launceston, Mackay, Melbourne, Perth, Sunshine Coast and Sydney airports with most complete by the end of the year.

“In the year 2000, we were the first airline to launch online check-in, and this is just another chapter in a long history of innovating to make the customer check-in experience like no other,” Plummer said.

The final piece of the app upgrade will be to allow passengers to bid for upgrades to Business Class and Economy X, which is a feature the Qantas app also includes.