I concur. I'm a foreign national with residency in Panama, and someone always asks for my residency card before I fly back to Panama to complete my round trip with PTY as my final destination. I always check in on-line and print out the boarding pass, just to make sure everything's OK, then stop at the check-in desk so they can stamp my boarding pass with the "DOCS OK" stamp. Never takes long with the *A Gold check-in line.

And for the record, while this document checking may seem redundant, I would say it's far superior to United's system. At least on CM, you can check in on line at T-24 without proving anything. At UA, they kick you out and force a check-in at the ticketing counter.

On departures out of PTY, I do go straight to the gate, but the only issue there is on flights to Brasil they always verify my brasilian visa while boarding.