Would really appreciate if someone could give respond to my #6 above and give me some recs. Need to make a decision on this soon.


@LHR/MEL/Europe FF:
- Is this transfer desk located before either arrival immigration or transit security? Because if it's after transit security (ie, you've committed to transit already) and they tell you they can't reroute your bags, then you've screwed yourself over since you now can't easily exit out to Hong Kong to go retrieve your bags. Sorry, I'm not very familiar with transiting via HKG... I'm used to just entering Hong Kong.
- According to your timeframe, it's 80min total for transit to a different airlines requiring bag pickup and re-checkin. However, wouldn't you say that's a normal-case scenario rather than worst-case scenario? I've had an instance or two where arrival immigration alone took ~40min or perhaps even longer.