Today a friend of mine was flying to Toronto from Rome on AC891 (his final destination was Montreal). He checked in online and went to the airport with printed boarding passes. Since I had driven him to the airport I went inside the terminal as well.

He had to drop-off two pieces of luggage. There was no luggage drop-off line, so we lined up at the regular check-in line. There an ICTS employee promptly grilled him with questions and put one of those really hard to remove stickers on his passport (which in my opinion simply ruin your passport by making in sticky). As soon as she was done, I asked her: "he already had his boarding pass, what if he didn't have any luggage and had gone straight to the gate?". Guess the answer! She said that all flights to the US had that kind of screening and hence didn't support online check-in. I reminded her that the flight was to Canada and not to the US to which she answered something to the extent of: "what difference does that make?". I didn't waste time trying to explain to her that Canada and the US are two different countries. Eventually, my friend and I reached the check-in counter. There we found an employee of ADR (the company that runs airports in Rome). She completely ignored the already printed boarding passes and asked for the e-ticket. She issued a new boarding pass. I asked her whether it would have been possible to go straight to the gate with a boarding pass printed at home. Her answer was close to "you can try but I don't think it's possible because we have make sure that your carry-on item is not too big or heavy".

The reason why I was so interested in all this is that I have to catch the same flight in two days to go back to Montreal. Should I try to go straight to the gate? Are those lovely ICTS agents going to call my name at the gate to put their sticker on my passport or are they going to deny me boarding because I didn't check in?!

I would really love to hear from anyone who tried to get on AC891 after having checked in online!

Thanks!

 

I have done this. I have also done this with interline tickets and onward boarding passes issued by Airone (AC partner and also operating with AC flight numbers). You will need to talk to the ICTS people in my experience. They will page you at the gate to give you a new boarding pass. They may also find you in the lounge (although technically you need an AC boarding pass with the lounge access written on it by hand to get access to the AZ Ulysses lounge which AC uses). Checkin online to get the seat you want, then have the boarding pass reprinted at the airport. This is my experience- last flight was about 2 weeks ago FCO/YYZ.

 

Hi, thanks for the reply! I just need one clarification, though. Have you ever actually printed out your boarding pass at home and used that to reach the gate? At the gate were you automatically paged or did you have to go up to the ICTS people?

thanks!

 

No- I had the boarding pass printed at VCE by Airone. I was automatically paged at the gate.