GOL lets you check-in via Twitter

Brazilian airline GOL has launched check-in via Twitter.

They claim to be the first airline in Latin America to do so, which implies they are not the first in the World (any ideas who else is doing it?)

In any case, it is quite an interesting channel. So far, we had written about twitter being used to check in people in the event of flight disruptions, but this is for all sorts of flights.

If you want to use the twitter check-in you need first to twitt with the hashtag #GOLcheckin, the airline contacts you next via direct message (DM) and the details are exchanged, and the boarding pass is finally sent to the travelers mobile.

I guess the process is handled by a human operator, making it in fact a cheaper and more efficient derivative of the traditional call center, but things will start to get interesting as soon as artificial intelligence and bots take over. Science fiction? not quite, as KLM is already starting to test chatbots for customer service...