Well, it sucks that this happened to you, but I've never seen a ticket or anything say that you only need to be at the airport 1 hour ahead. I've always seen, at least 2 hours for Domestic flights and 3 hours for international flights. I think this issue wouldn't have been an issue, if he arrived to the airport more than 70 minutes.
In my opinion, it doesn't matter how "small" the airport is, you should always arrive early, cause you never know what will happen.
I always fly out of Rapid City Airport and it's a "small" airport and I'm always 2 hours early. I don't care if I'm sitting at the airport for 90 minutes, at least I had plenty of time to get things fixed, if a problem happened.
Better safe, than sorry. They could have helped him out and got him going for another flight, but I advise that next time you arrive 2 hours before the flight, no matter how small your airport is.
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