[travelbug99]

= WARNING Travelers leaving St. John =

If you are attempting to catch the car barge in St. John, then fly out of St. Thomas on American Airline's 8:30 am flight you can forget it!

American Airlines has an annoying rule that you must have your bags checked in at least 90 minutes prior to boarding or you can not board the plane! ; Unheard of in this day and This information was not printed on ANY ticket, email notices, or boarding passes. If you search really hard, there is a small table actually showing this information on the AA web site. but its hardly helpful to someone on vacation. American Airlines, ruined a terrific trip for me and my family.
We were totally dismayed when we arrived at the Cyril E. King Airport check in desk at 7:00 am to find NO BODY behind the AA counter. Jet Blue was there as well helping customers, as every other airline, but no one from American Airlines was there at all. HELP I NEED TO GET HOME! When someone did finally show up at 8:00 we got the cold shoulder and the unpleasant news that we were 'to late' to check bags. Forget that we were checked into the flight the night before... but for some unknown reason could not check two bags ???? No explanation from a very rude AA person who would only put us on stand by for later in the day. There was a group of us left stranded by this ridiculous policy. It was not even an international flight!

So we waited as we watched our scheduled plane just sit there, and finally taxi off and leave without us. Why??? There was plenty of time to get us and our bags on the plane. Are they just lazy down there in the Virgin Islands and need more time? I saw a lot of AA personnel just standing around talking or checking their cell phones.

AA, this cost me hundreds of dollars and an extra day of travel to get home!

I have been a loyal customer for years and my frequent flyer status did me ZERO good. That's it, I'm done with AA. I would rather pay more and get some respect than fly on this broken, washed up airline.