When I bought tickets for our first HI visit, HA from LAX to HNL, the agent (a very helpful guy at Panda Travel) made sure to emphasize that we MUST check in 3 hours before flight time. Three hours? That's longer than for transatlantic international flights! So why so early? (Glad I didn't select the first flight of the day!)

Also, when I went back to check seat assignments, I was told none was available before checkin. Is that standard? so if we want a decent seat, do we need to check in even earlier, or will OLCI do the trick?