At the hotel it's normally part of the arrangement with the company to have keys ready for crews. In most hotels there is no check-in process, you just sign for your key. The hotel and company already know who's coming and when, and it's on the company account.

At the airport...crews aren't getting paid until the airplane starts moving. If we don't get head-of-the-line privileges, then we would have to assume worst-case security lines and show 2 hours early. Well, guess what...we aren't doing THAT for free, the airlines would have to pay us and raise ticket prices. If you want to pay me to show up early and drink coffee and read the paper in the terminal every morning, well I'm fine with that.