TUI Airways check in: the 48-hour window, and how a paid seat opens it at 14 days

Opening. The window opens 48 hours before departure on a standard booking. Buy any seat, whether Select Your Seat, Extra Legroom, Extra Space or Premium on long haul, and it opens 14 days ahead instead. That is a deliberate commercial lever rather than a technical limit: the seat you pay for buys you an earlier place in the queue as much as a place in the cabin.

The exception. Flights to Mexico and Jamaica open at 24 hours, whatever seat you hold.

Closing. Online check-in is no longer available in the final 1 hour before the scheduled time.

Two flights, two check-ins. The outbound and the return are separate: checking in for the flight out does nothing for the flight home, and on a two-week package that second window opens while you are away.

At the airport. Desks open at least 2 hours 30 before departure on short and medium haul, and at least 3 hours 30 on long haul. TUI does not publish a closing time for its desks on the day, so treat the 1 hour online cut-off as your planning figure and arrive well inside the desk opening window. Turning up earlier than those times gains you nothing: you cannot check in or clear security before the desks open.

This is the part of a TUI holiday that few travellers know about, and it removes the worst hour of a morning departure. On TOM and BY flights leaving before midday, you can hand over your hold luggage the evening before.

• Birmingham, London Gatwick North and Manchester Terminal 2: 14:00 to 21:00.
• Bristol, Newcastle, Glasgow and East Midlands: 16:00 to 21:00.

Every passenger's passport is required at the desk, exactly as on the day itself, so the whole party has to be there. Gatwick South also takes bags the evening before, but only until 30 October 2026, after which the service runs from the North Terminal alone.

Self-service bag drop is a different thing, available on the day at Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and both Gatwick terminals among others. Those units open when check-in opens for your flight, not before.

Dropping bags the night before does not change your boarding pass or your seat: it only means you arrive with hand luggage alone. Compare this with the twilight arrangements described on our easyJet check-in page, which work on a similar principle at different airports.

Check-in runs through Manage My Booking on tui.co.uk or through the TUI app. The app is optional; the website does the same job.

1. Open the booking with your reference and lead passenger surname, or sign in to your TUI account.
2. Enter the passport details for every traveller. These are checked again at the bag drop, including at the day-before desk, so a mismatch found now saves an argument later.
3. Confirm the seat, or accept the one allocated automatically if you did not buy one.
4. Add hold luggage if you are on a flight-only booking, where none is included.
5. Choose your boarding pass format, mobile or printed, as set out below.

Group check-in is not available on flights to the United States, nor on P&O Cruises services to Malta: those bookings are handled individually.

Travelling with hand luggage only means security is your first stop. A suitcase gives you two routes instead: the day-before desk described above, or the bag drop on the day itself.

Cabin bag. One piece of 55 x 40 x 20 cm weighing up to 10 kg for every passenger aged 2 and over, plus an under-seat item of 40 x 30 x 20 cm. Children under 2 get no cabin allowance. You must be able to lift the bag into the locker unaided; anything oversized travels in the hold, where a charge may apply.

Hold luggage on a package. A holiday flying TUI Airways in both directions carries 20 kg per person, and 25 kg on long-haul Premium as well as on TUI BLUE, Sensatori, Holiday Village, River Cruise and wedding bookings. Infants under 2 are allowed 10 kg. The party may share its total, provided no individual case goes over 25 kg.

Hold luggage on flight-only. Nothing is included. You buy 15, 20 or 25 kg, from 40 GBP for 15 kg return when booked in advance.

At the airport it costs far more. The same 15 kg allowance, bought when you arrive, is charged at 60 GBP or 70 EUR on short-haul routes, rising to 80 GBP or 90 EUR for Cape Verde, Egypt, the Gambia, Senegal and long-haul destinations. Excess weight is charged at 15 GBP per kilo on flights under 7 hours and 20 GBP per kilo above that. The gap between 40 GBP in advance and 60 GBP at the desk is the single strongest argument for sorting bags at booking.

Seat prices are not shown on the information pages; they appear in the booking path, which is where the amount for your own flight is settled. What it does publish is what each option gives you.

• Select Your Seat: a specific seat, nothing more.
• Extra Legroom: at least two inches more than standard.
• Extra Space: at least eight inches more.
• Premium, long haul only: a twenty-inch seat with at least six inches of extra pitch, fast-track security, lounge access and a meal.

Every one of these, including the cheapest, moves your check-in window from 48 hours to 14 days. If you are travelling as a family and care about sitting together, that earlier access is worth more than the seat itself. Without any purchase, TUI assigns seats when you check in online, and a party that checks in late may be scattered.

Both formats are accepted on TUI Airways flights. Mobile boarding passes depend on the route: where they exist, you save the pass to your phone and show it at bag drop, security, the gate and on board. Where they are not offered, a PDF arrives by email and has to be printed, a single pass on each A4 sheet, barcode unobstructed.

Reprints are free. Manage My Booking, Flight Extras and the app will all reissue a pass until 6 hours before the flight. Later than that, staff hand it to you in person, at the TUI bag drop, at airport check-in or in a TUI Holiday Store. No fee is published for any of this.

Check which format applies to your route before you leave for the airport, especially on a morning departure where you plan to use the day-before bag drop and arrive with nothing but a phone.

Nothing punitive happens. Anyone who arrives without having used the online window is processed at the airport on the day exactly as before, boarding pass included, and a TUI Holiday Store can handle it too. Neither an airport check-in fee nor a late penalty appears anywhere in TUI's published pages.

That makes TUI unusual among UK leisure carriers, where the missed online window normally carries a charge. Falling back on the desk is still a poor plan: with no published desk closing time and a 1 hour check-in cut-off, you are relying on the queue moving.

The one charge that does bite is baggage. A cabin bag that fails the gauge goes into the hold, where a charge may apply, and a suitcase bought at the desk costs more than the same allowance bought online.

Rules differ sharply from one UK carrier to the next; our check-in overview lists them airline by airline, and the Ryanair page shows the opposite approach, where missing the online window is charged for.

• 30 October 2026: day-before bag drop stops at Gatwick South. The service continues from the North Terminal, and passengers booked on a South Terminal departure after that date will need to drop bags on the day.

If you have a morning Gatwick flight booked for the winter season, check which terminal it leaves from before you plan an evening trip to the airport.