ARN check in
 

For reasons I shan't trouble you with, am required to be at ARN 6 hours ahead of the 22.25 departure to DOH. Anyone able to tell me what is the earliest I can check my bag in and get airside?

According to the homepage of Qatar, the check-in opens three hours prior to departure.
As for Oslo, where the handling is done by SGH, this is very consistent. In example, departure at 16:05 opens at 13:05.

I believe when I took this flight in April it was 3 hours.

However, depending on which particular day of the week you are flying, there could be a much bigger caveat to worry about.

Somewhat bizarrely, ARN seems to have very few flights scheduled for Saturday evenings, and so the airport pretty much shuts down (Terminal 5 anyway). After check-in and clearing security, I was met with ghost town - I believe there was a single duty free store open.

As I was traveling J, I thought no big deal, I'll just go and wait in the lounge. But to reach the lounge QR use at ARN, one has to pass through a small immigration desk first, and this was closed, with no indication as to when it was going to open. Nor were there any airport staff to ask, the terminal was literally deserted, save for other lost looking QR pax.

Things eventually started to open up again at about 90 minutes before departure, and I shot through to the lounge, which also looked to be only just opening up, I guess they only briefly open it for this particular flight perhaps, so I'm not sure if getting in earlier in the afternoon and trying to camp out for the evening would work either.

Curiously this seems to be an issues exclusively on Saturday nights, other days of the week look to have a much busier evening departure schedule.

Ok, thanks for the info, v useful to know. will take a good book and hope there's some decent seating groundside.

If I may ask, what is the date your leaving from ARN? Again depending on the day, QR can have 2 flights departing

Can I ask a question or two please?

We will also have around 6 hours at ARN for a QR flight to DOH departing around 9.30pm on 23/1/16, we will be travelling in Bus class.

Will we be able to have lounge access for the whole time or be restricted to just 3 hours?

Is it risky to go into the city for a few hours or would we not have time to do that?

Many thanks in advance.

I don't think you should have a problem with being in the lounge more then 3 hours but it depends on the lounge opening and closing time I would like to think that the lounge that QR uses ( Stockholm Arlanda Lounge) would be open until the last international flight.
As for going to Stockholm . It take 20 min with Arlanda Express,
Again all depends on when your getting into ARN. Time management is a tricky situation. For a 6 hours layover, in my own opinion, I would do it...

Thank you, our flight is due to land around 2pm so it's nearer a 7 hour layover. I'll look into going into the city even if we just do a few hours, as 7 hours is far too long to spend in a lounge.

Thank you for heads up... I will fly on Saturday evening flight soon... I will, therefore, plan to be at at airport no more that 70 minutes prior to departure...

You're most welcome. Although I actually have a slight update to this,

I took this QR172 again on saturday and the situation was slightly different this time.

There were a handful of extra departures in the late afternoon/early evening, the last of which was an Ethiopian flight to Addis Ababa via Vienna, which left at 8pm from the same end of the terminal. This appeared to be enough to keep the lounge and immigration desks open when I came through at about 7.45pm.

However the traffic and schedules here seem rather seasonal, so I would try and take a look at the flights due to depart on the particular day your flying and make a call, if there are in fact one or two other flights within a few hours, you might be OK.

That said, While the lounge is comfortable enough, its offerings are pretty meager - 2 bottles of cheap wine, Heineken and soft drinks, plus some very basic snacks. So really not somewhere worth spending any longer than necessary.

Oh, and I can confirm check-in opened 3 hours before hand, to the minute.