First time going to Brazil in March and this Canadian govt travel advisory site has an interesting comment regarding flights, wondering if anyone can shed some light...

"Reconfirm flight details with your airline and arrive at the airport two hours prior to departure for international flights and one hour prior to departure for domestic flights. Failure to do so could result in the loss of your seat, as airlines attempt to accommodate passengers on waiting lists."

Now, I'm a fairly seasoned traveler, good with airports, I don't SPEAK Portuguese but I can speak Spanish and kinda piece together stuff in written Portuguese (I'm gonna try and learn more than just the basics before I go for sure) but what's this about? I get waiting lists and I'll show up early for my flight, but I can't figure this out.

I'm assuming if you check in at T-3 then you're fine and odds are I'll be at GRU plenty early for GRU-IAH but I'm thinking I'll be coming in from GIG and I'm wondering if OLCI is good enough or you really truly need to confirm this stuff? Even though it's contract employees I can't see UA just bumping me off (I have an F ticket for this flight, but even as a Y if I'm OLCIed that's just wrong) but I could picture this for a quick TAM flight domestically.