[Trvlr]

Jetliner: The city was Las Vegas, and it was a Thursday (if memory serves). I can't comment as to your "2-hours early" claim, however I think you will agree with The Judge, that 40 minutes with no checked baggage is plenty of time to get a passenger on a plane, just as 6 minutes is plenty of time for a passenger to walk from the gate to the plane - hell, I sat and watched a plane I could practically touch sit still in front of me for 6 long minutes before it left. The time was on my boarding pass so there can be no argument there. I arrived at the airport about an hour before the flight left. You state "If anything . . . will go ahead and let the passengers board if THEY ARE BEHIND." So if the airline employees, who are BEING PAID to be there and are in far more control of their surroundings than a passenger, run behind on their duties that's okay, but if a passenger who IS PAYING to be there runs a few minutes behind, or is held up by airport security they get screwed? Methinks you are an intelligent person who now gets the core of my complaint. See below for more . ..

The Judge: "Rules are rules . . . " - apparently not. According to Jetliner, the rules are applied arbitrarily by the boarding agents, and this is the core of my complaint. The agent was a 'she' by the way, and curiously, almost all the power-hungry control-freaks I've encountered have been female - they bore an unsettling resemblance to the frigid nuns from Catholic school quite frankly, but I digress. I'm not sure what you are getting at with your time frame references, but I can tell you that when I arrived at the gate, everyone was already on the plane, and thank you for stating that six minutes is an eternity for any competent agent; that's what I thought, and is part of my complaint. However, instead of simply putting me on the plane during this time, the agent was too busy bumping me to another flight; hence my opinion that in fact the seat had been filled. Furthermore, if you read my post again, you will find that the 'rules' didn't apply to the only other two flights that day (including the one I was bumped to). As for the TSA, I have nothing but disgust for them, as did the service (non-airline) employees at the Vegas airport; they HATED the TSA people because they were arbitrarily abusive even to them. I had 5 hours to find out what complaints could be lodged, and who I should complain to. There is no way to 'complain' to the TSA (so I was told), other than the repeated comments I made while being subjected to their ridiculous exercise to the tune of "I'm missing my flight because of this, could you please step it up?" A very nice woman (surprise!) who had worked at the Vegas airport for years in the information/general customer service booth told me quite a few things about the TSA; some I already knew some I didn't - none of them were what you would call positive. She told me, as you stated, I really had no recourse other than to complain to the airline, which involved filling out a form that (as she informed me) would, for all intents and purposes, go nowhere and do nothing for me. Her assessment is consistent with other reports I've read on this website.

airhead: "If ALL passengers were allowed . . ." hmmm, interesting jump to hyperbole that isn't relevant to this post. I guess if ALL boarding agents were allowed to fall a few minutes behind in THEIR work flights wouldn't take delays? If you agree with Jetliner, then you also agree that I was at the airport in plenty of time - how about the airline employees and the TSA learn how to do the job they are BEING PAID TO DO properly before they point fingers at the passengers who, for all intents and purposes, ARE PAYING THEM. Don't blame passengers for inefficient airport/airline employees - again, the latter is being compensated for their time, the former is paying to have their time wasted. i.e. Telling a passenger they have to show up at an airport two hours early for an hour long flight to compensate for whatever problems the airline/airport staff may encounter is bad business, inconsiderate, and insulting. I have better things to do with the time I've already paid someone else to manage properly than use it to compensate for THEIR inadequacies. Your attitude reminds me of the banks existing today on taxpayer dollars that have the audacity to foreclose on same taxpayer's homes. Again, what the hell would a complaint to the TSA yield, even if it could be lodged? A free ticket on TSA airlines? Really, your predictable buck-passing is tiresome. Passengers have lives and schedules to follow too. Your moniker is appropriate, and your bias as a former self-serving airline employee is clear.