vfw614 Your experience resembles my recent one. It is as if the cabin crew only do half their job, imagining that pax don’t know better so they can get away with it. It probably works for most as I would assume many pax on this route are first time AY long haul fliers. In my case, the poor FA had to do so many extra runs because I knew to ask. He also lied or bent the truth on three different occasions but that didn’t help him much as he got caught every time. Poor fella.
AY only checks baggage through if you have all flights on one ticket or if flights are AY-operated and AY flight number.
The LAX boarding process was stupid, but no reason to stand in that queue for 20 minutes. Just get up and join when they actually start boarding.