Thangs for the birthday advice peg, I'll bear it in mind

Just to clarify, what I'm tying to find out is the MAX check-in, i.e. the earliest that they will allow us to check-in before the flight with bags. Strange concept, I know, but we got bitten by this with BA in HKG earlier this year, who refused to allow us to check-in at the airport more than 2Hrs before departure (?!). Confused the heck out of the Mandarin, who could not understand why we would want to cancel one of their Limos and instead fight our way to the city check-in with our bags and take the train....
And I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has been caught by the (relatively) new rules for short-haul at LHR which have you standing around with your bags for hours until BAA will "let" them check you in...

I'm going to reserve seats, but I'm aware that "apparently" single travellers sitting in couples' seats are fresh meat for being moved around to "better" seats (or perhaps I'm too used to BA). Since we're now on seperate PNR's we look like two seperate travellers, and unfortunately (or not, depending on your viewpoint) do not share a surname, or anything else that would make it obvious that we're a couple. I'm just wondering if anyone has an opinion as to how "sacrosanct" CX consider pre-assigned seats, and how regularly you've lost your requested seat at check-in.

We'll think about party invitiations closer to the time, for those who happen to be in HKG that day

Ken.

"I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second." - Steven Wright