TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Early Check In at Airport

In the past years we have checked in at the airport, usually USair, in the morning of our flight home when the desk opened. Our flight was about 3:00 or 3:30 p.m. Have read on TTOL that now the airlines do not allow this. Does any have any info. on this? Thanks.

I can't speak for AA/USAir with absolute authority, but I believe they still allow the same early check-in.

JB will not allow the same early check-in, or at least wouldn't allow it on a Saturday in early December. They went strictly by the book and said it was because of inadequate space for the accepted luggage. I know this because the previous year we called the SXM airport and were given misinformation regarding JBs policy and arrived at the airport expecting to be able to check in and get rid of our luggage according to what they had told us. We ended up having to sit and wait for an hour and a half to get rid of it even though they had checked us in and already given us our boarding passes. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />

In December, we arrived at 11:30 for a 4:20 flight. AA had no problem checking a bag for us. The airport was fairly empty and we had time for lunch and were able to shop in the new stores. Went through security in record time.

We check in 4 hours ahead with westjet so we can watch the jets land at sunset beach bar.

In July, we were not allowed the early check-in by USAir/AA. I inquired why, having done it for many years and was told that it's no longer permitted.
We had to take our baggage back out, get the rental car and go back to our timeshare so we could get the resort to allow us to leave our bags there while we went to lunch.
What a pain. At least we'll know for future departures.

Checked in at 10:30 for a 4:20 AA flight on a Fri., Dec 11th. Maybe it depends on traffic?