A little context...

Adria Airways (code JP) is "the airline of Slovenia" (or so they say), and is a member of Star Alliance ("*A").

I'm looking at putting together an award trip redeeming United miles on a variety of *A carriers. The route would take us transatlantic on LH into FRA, with a 3 hour layover, then connecting to an Adria Airways flight to Ljubljana.

For the Adria leg, the aircraft is a Canadair CRJ-900. The flight is about 1hr15min.

My questions...

Has anyone here flown this flight? Familiar with Adria? Anything to watch out for?

We usually prefer to not check bags, and I can generally manage with one standard maximum-legal size carry on bag (at least as usually defined by most major international carriers). This may be more of a challenge on this flight.

According to Adria's website, they appear to be fairly strict about carry on (hand/cabin) bags (like many smaller European carriers): just one piece (not "one piece plus a personal item"), maximum weight of 8 kg (17.6 pounds). Anyone have any direct experience with that - do they generally stick to these limits?

With more than 3 hours to connect, I'm not too worried about making the connection - whether or not we end up checking bags. And the flight is just an hour or so, so we can tough it out on a CRJ (although it will be the third segment at the bleary end of about 24 hours of flying from the US west coast). I'm more concerned about our bags.

We could check one bag all the way through (United>Lufthansa>Adria). I know what to expect from UA and LH, but how reliable is Adria for checked bags? Since we expect to move out within 24 hours of arrival in Ljubljana, it would be pretty problematic for us if our bag misconnected in FRA and arrived delayed by a day or more.

Any tips for a smooth trip on Adria into LJU?

Thanks.