There were a few people interested in hearing my first time experience buying/checking in online so here it is. We flew out of St Louis to Montana connecting in Denver 6/26 returning 7/3.
As per Disboard info I checked flights thru expedia & orbitz and put a watch on it for notification when the price went down then bought my tickets directly from United, signing up for the frequent flyer program right before I bought. We don't fly very often and will probably never use the ff miles but the benefits of doing this included it being very easy to log into the site to check our flights later, trying to check in later without a ff # was so slow I just canceled the page and dug out the # to log in and quickly got what I needed.
After I bought our tickets and got the confirmation email I printed out the itinerary and receipt to have just in case, I never needed to show these to anyone but it was nice having the itinerary later since the landing time isn't on your tickets. 23 hours before our flight I logged into the site with the ff # and it was very easy to check us all in, check our seats and print out the boarding passes.
At St Louis we had a park and fly so our shuttle dropped us off right in front of the United terminal. The podium for curbside check-in was right there with noone waiting (something previously I didn't know we could use). I just gave our last name, confirmed # of people and where our destination was and # of bags checking and he printed out tags (which I made sure had the right info on) marked our luggage and said he'd take them in for us. During this time he did ask if we needed seat assignments and gave us our gate number. We tipped him and off we went past the line at the counter with about 20 people in it straight to security. At security was the first place I had to show the boarding passes I had printed, they looked at our id and asked the kids for their names. Then we all had to take off shoes/coats (except DD7 was able to keep her shoes on), put bags on the conveyer and walked thru with no problems.
Then we went to the gate to wait for boarding. They did announce we only needed the boarding passes for that flight so I put away our passes for the connecting flight and had my printouts ready. When we boarded they scanned the pass I had printed and gave it back to us and we were on the plane. In Denver when we boarded they kept the copies I had and gave us regular cardboard passes as we boarded.
For the flight back I didn't have internet access to print our boarding passes and the airport was very small with no curbside or kiosks to check in so we had to do it the old fashioned way of checking in. We were there before they even opened at 5am and were the 2nd in line. All we needed was our names, id for adults and they checked our bags and gave us our boarding passes with the connecting flight/luggage claims checks in an envelope.
It was all very easy and we had no problems on any of our flights. Hope this helps other first timers. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Calie
As per Disboard info I checked flights thru expedia & orbitz and put a watch on it for notification when the price went down then bought my tickets directly from United, signing up for the frequent flyer program right before I bought. We don't fly very often and will probably never use the ff miles but the benefits of doing this included it being very easy to log into the site to check our flights later, trying to check in later without a ff # was so slow I just canceled the page and dug out the # to log in and quickly got what I needed.
After I bought our tickets and got the confirmation email I printed out the itinerary and receipt to have just in case, I never needed to show these to anyone but it was nice having the itinerary later since the landing time isn't on your tickets. 23 hours before our flight I logged into the site with the ff # and it was very easy to check us all in, check our seats and print out the boarding passes.
At St Louis we had a park and fly so our shuttle dropped us off right in front of the United terminal. The podium for curbside check-in was right there with noone waiting (something previously I didn't know we could use). I just gave our last name, confirmed # of people and where our destination was and # of bags checking and he printed out tags (which I made sure had the right info on) marked our luggage and said he'd take them in for us. During this time he did ask if we needed seat assignments and gave us our gate number. We tipped him and off we went past the line at the counter with about 20 people in it straight to security. At security was the first place I had to show the boarding passes I had printed, they looked at our id and asked the kids for their names. Then we all had to take off shoes/coats (except DD7 was able to keep her shoes on), put bags on the conveyer and walked thru with no problems.
Then we went to the gate to wait for boarding. They did announce we only needed the boarding passes for that flight so I put away our passes for the connecting flight and had my printouts ready. When we boarded they scanned the pass I had printed and gave it back to us and we were on the plane. In Denver when we boarded they kept the copies I had and gave us regular cardboard passes as we boarded.
For the flight back I didn't have internet access to print our boarding passes and the airport was very small with no curbside or kiosks to check in so we had to do it the old fashioned way of checking in. We were there before they even opened at 5am and were the 2nd in line. All we needed was our names, id for adults and they checked our bags and gave us our boarding passes with the connecting flight/luggage claims checks in an envelope.
It was all very easy and we had no problems on any of our flights. Hope this helps other first timers. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Calie
