"Forget about check in: just Passnfly"

I continue exploring apps, services and ideas that aim to improve the air travel experience. After Changeyourflight and Airport Guru today is the turn of Passnfly.

I learned about Passnfly during the last Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and this week I had the chance to meet its founder, Louis Tag, and speak about Passnfly and its aim to make travel totally hassle-free.

Passnfly, basically, takes care of managing your flight check-ins. It pulls your flight details from your email account and checks you in automatically, while also taking care of details such as your seating preferences or sending you alerts about your flights.

The idea is that you do not need to worry about each of these small steps you need to fulfill before any flight, such as printing out the tickets, constantly checking your watch to make sure you are on time, etc. simple steps they might be but they are also a source of anxiety and time-waste for many travelers. Additionally they are also working on a feature for baggage tracking, another source of concern for any traveler!

Here is a video-interview with its founder:

When it comes to the business model, Passnfly offers the first three check-ins for free, while any additional check-in after these costs €3. In my opinion this might be the single most important barrier for Passnfly to overcome, as travelers become increasingly wary of ancillary fees.

This leaves a potential market of frequent and very frequent travelers that might be less sensitive to price while deriving greater value from an automated check-in solution. It is for this public that Passnfly has released a flat-fee option of the app, while working on establishing partnerships with travel services operators that would be able to bundle their service as part of an all-included corporate travel offering.

In any case, Passnfly is aiming to ride a trend: the automated check-in, still minoritary at present, but the moment it takes off, this Barcelona-based startup is going to be in pole position.