Makkasan Airport Railway Link baggage check-in is a great idea, but they need to sort some things out first.

Last week saw the commencement of the baggage check-in service for flights on Thai Air and Bangkok Airways at the Airport Railway Link Makkasan station in Bangkok.

You can check-in to your flight, deposit your baggage and get your boarding pass at Makkasan station from between 12 and 3 hours before your flight.

In theory it’s a great idea and once they iron out the kinks and fix some shortsighted regulations it will be a great service, especially for people that have flights departing late in the afternoon and at night.

Great for late flights

More often than not, my flight out of Thailand is midnight, so I usually have to try to wrangle a late check-out, sometimes having to pay half a day’s rate, or store the bags at the bell desk after check-out, and come back hours later to pick them up and take them to the airport. Now we can just check-out at noon, take our bags and check them in at Makkasan, then go off and do our thing until we head to the airport several hours later.

Since you are already checked in to the flight, there is no need to be at the airport 3 hours before the flight, you just need to clear immigration. I would however advise not getting to the airport too late in peak season, as the line up to get through passport control can be very long (I’m talking about snaking all around the departure lobby).

There are a number of problems though stemming from an apparent lack of planning that need to be fixed before this service can reach it’s full potential.