[sincole]

My flight is scheduled at 6:52pm. I was little late because of huge traffic and I reached airport at 6pm. I managed to checkin with the spirit airlines agent at 6:10 pm. By the time I reached the gate after security it was 6:38. At the gate I was surprised to see everyone already boarded and there were no representatives at the gate to ask. I was waiting waiting and suddenly the flight was pulled back from gate at around 6:45pm while I was standing outside and just watching with the boarding pass in hand.
After sometime somebody came and just rescheduled me (on standby) to some other flight next day but never gave me reason for early take off without me.
When I wrote to the customer service asking them how can a flight leave the gate without a passenger who checked-in at the airport (actually there were two more people with me) before departure time, they replied the departure time is the time at which the "flight should take off from runway" and hence they had to leave 15 mins prior to departure time from the gate.
Isn't that funny, i just confirmed with FAA that departure time is the pull back time. The reply is attached. No idea what to do with these guys. Sooper waste of money.
I am not going to ask/argue if I cam after departure time, but this is ridiculous since I felt so happy reaching before time after all delays.

[Der Richter]

From Spirit's website:

"You will need to be at the boarding gate at least 15 minutes prior to departure for domestic flights (30 minutes prior for international departures) or you may lose your reservation."

Since your timeline has you at the gate 14 minutes before departure, you clearly arrived later than Spirit's stated guidelines. Why do you think this is a valid reason for a complaint?