This weeks Whine Wednesday is about Malaysia Airlines horrible Check-in procedure at Bangkok Airport but also concerns other oneWorld airlines such as Royal Jordanian in Kuala Lumpur.
The point of having a Premium Check-In benefit is to deal with the procedure expediently and not having to wait behind tons of people but the way it works with many oneWorld airlines outstations is everything but satisfactory.
oneWorld elite tier benefits are extremely generous when it comes to priority check-in in the way that even the lowest tier (Ruby) is allowed to use the Business Class counter.
You can access the oneWorld elite tier benefit table here.
This generous policy leads to a congestion of eligible passengers at the Business Class check-in of which there is only one single counter for Malaysia Airlines Bangkok departures as well as Royal Jordanian’s check-in at Kuala Lumpur KLIA.
Conclusion
Situations where airlines only have one single counter for the premium check-in are entirely unacceptable. Of course every single check-in counter costs money for the airline they have to pay to the airport operator so the motivation to cut down on check-in lines is definitely there.
It’s not rare that there is a good amount of passengers eligible for the premium check-in especially with widebody departures such as the Royal Jordanian case. And everybody who has ever been on an RJ flight knows how much baggage is being checked in by the respective clientele. It can take forever to even just pick up a boarding pass and premium lane/lounge invite pass.
