This past spring, I flew on Air Asia from Hanoi to Bangkok. I had paid in advance for the Express Boarding. As check-in time approached, an employee brought out two stand-up signs. One read: Check In; the other read: Express Check-In.

Most passengers, local and Western, were in the Check-In line; only a few of us Westerners were in the Express Check-In line. Meanwhile one local woman, pregnant and with 2 other little kiddies in tow, came over to the Express Check-In line where I was number one and told me that as a pregnant woman she was entitled to Express boarding first and inserted herself into the line ahead of me.

As the employees began the actual boarding, they insisted on checking the local woman's ticket & paperwork. It seems that she didn't pay for the Express Check-In, so they told her to return to the regular Check-In line! Bravo for the Air Asia staff at Hanoi Airport!

Well, well, well: it did my heart good to see her pregnant heinie marched back over to the line where it truly belonged. Oh, yes. I was then the first person to be checked in at the Express Check-In. After all, I paid for it and so it was only right that I received it.