Originally Posted by
wingedwhale
Yes The Club (3rd party)
As for your second point, that sounds contradictory to another user's experience of needing to arrive for the normal check-in time such that they couldn't enter later despite the delay.
Every airline and every station is subject to be different. One or two flights a day type stations where the counters are staffed X hours prior to departure (and you can see your enroute inbound plane is 2 hours late) is a lot different than, say DL at ATL or UA at SFO, where someone is always there, and you're subject to having an aircraft or crew swap at any time.