Passengers flying with Emirates could soon have one of the biggest bugbears taken out of flying.
The airline is trialing a home check-in service where they pick up customers’ bags from their front door.
A new video shared on social media has given a sneak preview of the system, which is being trialed in the Middle East.
As part of the scheme, an Emirates employee drives to different passengers’ houses ahead of their flight.
They then pick up a person’s luggage and check it in using an electronic check-in desk in the back of their van.
The person’s passport is scanned and the flight details are logged, then the luggage is tagged and the traveler is handed their boarding pass.
The process would mean that passengers can avoid dragging their luggage to the airport and just have to pick it up from the carousel at their destination.
Once they arrive, they simply have to head through security and on to their boarding gate – just as if they had no checked luggage.
An Emirates spokesperson told Gulf News: “At Emirates, we continually invest in innovative ways to improve the customer experience.
“At the moment we are trialing several initiatives to provide greater convenience for our customers and will share details when they become available.”
It’s not yet known whether the program will be available to all customers or just certain cabins.
The airline isn’t the first to try such a scheme — British Airways has also teamed up with travel tech start-up AirPortr to offer a similar service to flyers living inside the M25 and flying from Heathrow, Gatwick and London City from October 26.
They claim to seal, secure and deliver your bags in hours with live tracking straight from your door.
Passengers must book a slot, which costs between $25 and $50, on the app for the Airportr team to pick-up luggage.
The team will then arrive at your home or hotel, weigh your baggage, put a tracking bar code on it and seal it in an “anti-tamper” bag before taking it to the airport.
At the terminal, it will be taken from the “anti-tamper” bag and put through an X-ray machine before being processed and put on the plane as normal.