Beware departing Male is a zoo and typical third world airport experience. We found massive queues around the BA departure times. We only just managed to check in on time after queuing for over an hour to get into the terminal and past the first level of security.

The third party lounge is poor and we were too late to use it anyway, we did however drop in at the other third party lounge (also for PP and HSBC Premier cardholders). This made it easy to keep tabs on the large queue to the boarding gate/bus point in relative comfort.

I am afraid departing Male even in CW is an unpleasant experience. Made worse by the airport being completely dry.