[Albert Lin]

My wife took American Airlines from JFK to LAX in april and had an awful experience. She's much too nice to complain but I'm not.

She arrived at JFK 50 minutes early and they told her she couldn't check in. I'm not sure when they changed the requirement for domestic flights, but it used to be 30 minutes before your departure. So they put her on the next flight and she STILL got to the gate 30 minutes before the departure of her ORIGINAL flight so she ran to that gate to try to get on the flight.

She arrived at her original gate 25 minutes early and asked if she could get on and the gate agent just looked her up and down and said, "You might want to pull up your shirt," and WALKED AWAY! She wouldn't let her on the flight and gave no explanation. Wifey had just run across the terminal and just noticed that her shirt had drifted lower but by no means was nipple or even bra showing. Not only that, she was clearly out of breath and I'd expect some kind of politeness and courtesy and understanding. I can only guess that the gate agent was in a pissy mood and/or was jealous of a pretty girl with a nice rack.

So, to recap, not only was she denied check-in 50 minutes early, she got to the gate of her original flight 25 minutes before departure and STILL was turned away. Not only was she turned away but was turned away rudely and silently judged on her outfit.

I'm DEFINITELY never flying American again and I'm going to do my best to discourage anyone else from flying them. Not just for this experience but for a luggage fiasco (story soon) and a nightmarish "non-stop" from Vegas to JFK that took 10 hours.

P.S., I just checked their policy which states "Pre-reserved seats are subject to cancellation unless you have checked in (obtained a boarding pass) at least 30 minutes before scheduled departure." and " In addition to checking in 30 minutes before departure, you must be present at the departure gate and ready to board at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled departure time to retain your reservation and a seat."

So were the agents just being ****** all at the same time? Wifey was clearly in time to check-in AND was in time to board, despite being held up at check-in and running across the terminal. That pisses me off even more.