Cathay – downtown checkin in HK – check in a whole day before at the down town terminal – off to Macau for the day and then back to the airport, into the diners club lounge (free for members) and then onto the flight – great service.
Asian airlines are pretty good – along with excellent airports generally (where for example you can buy lounge access if you are travelling economy). The airport facilities really help. Take US airports – more like concentration camps – starts the trip in a bad mood.

And it helps being 6′6” tall – one finds that a bit of the ’stand over’ tactics really help in asia. If they say ‘No’ – you just stand there and look pissed off – its amazing how that quickly turns into “Ah – yes, I think we can change that…”

Danyl said earlier: “I don’t think they start paying them until the clock ticks over.”. If that was the case I seriously doubt they would be there 20 mins earlier, albeit chatting. Normally wage earners only turn up at work when they get paid, not beforehand. But I could be wrong.

I also agree with Chthoniid in the very first comment. Many airports have much smaller time windows for check-in.

Thai Airways contracts Air NZ to provide ground handling at the airport and that agreement will be covered by a service level agreement (SLA) The SLA’s I have seen (and no I don’t work for Air NZ and never have) are really specific and do include the time the counters need to be opened, how many counters must be open at that time and is policed heavily by the Airline Rep stationed at the port. I would expect this is the same for the Thai-Air NZ SLA.

So your criticism of Air NZ might be misguided and you may want to enquire with Thai Airways and suggest to them that they open the counters eairler. However this would increase the cost to them and would then drive up the price of your ticket.

Ben

Hello Heard of bankruptcy .
They nearly went under during the blessings of private ownership. That never seems to count of course , but if the meal is cold
during government ownership there is hell to pay.

Firstly 100% agree AirNZ overall is GREAT, in particular very innovative (super easy check in, space+, their new “fast bag” etc).

The open 3 hours b4 check is is quite standard. It frustrated me no end when overseas to get to Airport early to be told the check in counter opens TWO hours b4 the flight left (had this with Qantas, and at more than one international airport). Means lugging bags around for an hour or so then re-queuing to check in.

I haven’t found any airport that will let you check in much more than 3 hours. (especially the big ones – coz they would have thousands of pieces of luggage from potentially hundreds of different flights to store/sort. The 3 hour window means they are just dealing with what’s leaving “now”.

But agree its silly when their are staff at other counters.

To be fair to Air New Zealand, this is likely because their customer airline – in this case, Thai – does not open their check-in till 3 hours prior to departure. Remember, you are not checking in for an Air NZ flight. This 3 hour check-in is the norm at airports which are not your home base and where the carrier may have only 1 or 2 flights per day.

Where Air NZ provide customer handling for other airlines, they do so on term of contract, so actually, your grievance should be directed at Thai. Even if you said the Air NZ staff should take the initiative, they may not be able to log into systems that allow them to check in for the Thai flight. So it’s best you vent at Thai, not Air NZ.

Stephen