The Best Time to Check In for Your Flight to Score the Best Free Seat

When you’re a budget traveler, scoring a coveted seat without having to pay extra fees is possible — but it might take strategic timing.

If you’ve already chosen your seat when you purchased your tickets, you’re at an advantage. But many airlines don’t allow passengers in the most basic economy option to do so, and that’s when check-in time can make all the difference. That’s because during check-in, airlines assign seating to people who haven’t already paid for it — which means the time of day you check in can mean the difference between getting assigned a relaxing seat by the window or a middle seat wedged between two people in the last row by the bathroom.

If this is you, don’t dilly-dally when you get an email about checking into your flight.

“l aways say right at the 24-hour mark, if possible,” Fora travel adviser Amna Ismail said. “Set an alarm, as silly as that sounds, and do it, especially if you’re flying economy.”

Many airlines will allow passengers to check in 24 hours before they depart for a flight, and doing this immediately can increase your chances of getting assigned the preferred seats in the location you want –– without having to pay extra to guarantee it.

When people check in last-minute, “oftentimes, if it’s a full flight, especially around holidays or really busy periods, we find that you might get left with a seat toward the back, or a dreaded middle seat, which people hate,” said Katy Nastro, a travel expert and spokesperson for Going, a company that tracks airfare deals.

At the same time, even checking in as early as you can is not always a guarantee, because there are other factors that could determine how many window or aisle seat assignments are left by check-in time.

The leftover seating assignments “vary so much by routing and the time of year, like where you’re going. … Like Wednesday afternoon going from Las Vegas to somewhere, your likelihood of getting a window seat or an aisle seat is better than on a Friday evening,” Ismail said.

If you’re flying to a city where many people have loyalty status for an airline — like San Francisco and United Airlines, for example — then people with loyalty status will be more likely to get that coveted upgrade to a better seat, no matter how early you check in, Ismail added.

If you do have loyalty status with an airline, it also helps to check in early because it will place you higher on the potential upgrade list. “Airlines really want to try to sell those seats to begin with, so they’re going to wait until the final hour to even offer up any upgrades,” Nastro said. “So if you want to try to maximize your chances at getting an upgrade, you want to check in as early as possible.“

There are instances where you can check in at the airport and still get a favorable seat, but this is risky for other reasons.

Checking in later might score you a better seat, travel experts said, but it also increases your chances of getting bumped to a later flight and denied boarding to the flight you wanted to take. That’s because airlines are allowed to oversell flights within reason to compensate for “no-shows.”

When airlines are deciding who should be bumped to the next flight because of an oversold flight, “sometimes they’ll default to whoever’s checked in last,” Nastro said.

After you check in early, don’t give up if you only see seats in the last row.

“People should definitely check in early, but keep checking this map if you are trying to get a better seat,” Nastro said. That’s because seat options can open up as people change their travel plans, and “you can play seat musical chairs.”

“I’ve had that happen where a better window seat opened up, so I was able to move a couple rows up and sit in a window versus an aisle,” Nastro said as an example.

Also, you can go offline and try simply asking a gate agent if there is any other seating option available once you have checked into your flight. Airlines sometimes oversell tickets, or people might not show up for the flight they bought. This is why it helps to ask for what you want when you go up to the ticket counter of your flight before boarding starts.

Take it from Ismail, who used this strategy herself when she bought a flight that initially only had middle seat assignments left.

By asking a gate agent if there were other seat options, Ismail was able to get moved to a window seat, which Ismail preferred. “It was a United Premium Economy [seat] … and they didn’t charge,” Ismail recalled. “Being nice and being courteous goes a long way.”