15-Minute Boarding Now Available for Guangzhou-Beijing Flights

  

Source: OT-Team(G), 光明网

Starting from July 8, China Southern Airlines (CSA) has fully canceled the check-in cutoff time for its flights between Guangzhou and Beijing Daxing Airport, introducing the new "15-Minute Boarding" service.

This initiative breaks with the traditional domestic aviation practice of closing check-in counters 30 to 40 minutes before flight departure, reducing the restrictions on passengers imposed by conventional check-in deadlines. It is the first such service in China's civil aviation industry.

With this new service, passengers no longer need to worry about the check-in cutoff time. As long as they arrive at the boarding gate 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time, just before the plane door closes, they can board the flight.

The "15-Minute Boarding" service is an upgrade of the previous "Fast Track Flight" service. If passengers cannot make it to the gate 15 minutes before departure, they can quickly rebook onto the next available flight through the fast-track service.

Currently, the Guangzhou–Beijing CSA "Fast Track" service operates 28 round-trip flights daily, with business travelers making up a high proportion of passengers. This new initiative is designed to better serve passengers who need to change their flight schedules at the last minute, have urgent business travel needs, or are catching early or late flights, ultimately improving the overall convenience of civil aviation travel.

Although this service is currently available only on this particular route, its significance for the aviation industry is considerable. In recent years, the civil aviation sector has been working hard to shorten the time passengers spend in the airport to compete with high-speed rail. One of the key efforts has been to reduce check-in cutoffs, but even so, air travel still lags behind high-speed rail in terms of convenience.

If other flights can adopt a similar model as the Guangzhou–Beijing Daxing route, where passengers without checked luggage can simply arrive at the gate 15 minutes before departure, this would significantly close the gap between air travel and high-speed rail. In this sense, civil aviation would eliminate one of its biggest disadvantages compared to rail travel.

Many netizens have expressed their support for this new measure, with expectations that it will be extended to more airports in the future.