A family flying American Airlines from Cancun to Dallas back home to New York’s LaGuardia airport wasn’t allowed to board their connecting flight. And video of their confrontation with gate agents in Dallas raises concerns about the airline’s procedures.
Their first flight from Cancun to Dallas was delayed. They had to hurry to their connecting gate D31 for the next leg of their journey. They made it while the boarding doors were still open, and passengers were still getting on the place. Phew! Just in under the wire! Except, no, they weren’t allowed to board the aircraft and had the jetbridge door closed in their face.
- The family was told they were late, “Door closes at D-minus 10. You arrived late and that’s why we couldn’t put you on the flight.” Except the door wasn’t closed, and they were still boarding.
- They were told, “you’re going to have to go down to the rebooking.” Despite three agents at the gate, nobody there would help the family get on another flight home.”
Trying to make sense of the situation, the family thinks it must be antisemitism? “I had a cap & my sons had yarmulkes . Look at the woman shutting the door with zero remorse. I can’t think of anything else other than antisemitism.”
My wife and 3 kids were last in line to board . Person front of us in line got on the plane & we didn’t. We were not on standby , we had legitimate tickets & the crew couldn’t give us an explanation.
Was it because we were Jewish ? We didn’t get any other valid reasons for it… pic.twitter.com/noKlVRzoNf
— In Love With Dogs (@AnimalsAddicts) June 6, 2025
Cancun > DFW was delayed 10 minutes
DFW > LGA is where the incident occurred .– Bags were checked in
– No overbooking
– No standby
– No announcementsUnsure exact timing . There was a good amount of minutes left to board , but why does time matter when we were in queue &…
— In Love With Dogs (@AnimalsAddicts) June 6, 2025
I can’t rule out antisemitism – there isn’t video of the entire situation – but I see little that suggests it. Instead, a different explanation seems more likely. It still doesn’t reflect well on American Airlines, but I don’t think these passengers were singled out for religious beliefs or ethnicity.
Instead, bad software coupled with bad customer service probably meant that these passengers could run to the flight and think they’d made it, and received no real explanation of what happened. The gate agents should have provided a better explanation!
- An employee mentions doors close 10 minutes prior to departure, but most likely the passenger lost their seats before that. The situation probably doesn’t have anything to do with the doors close time (the doors were still open when they arrived, and American’s rules have long allowed gate agents to hold the door for passengers in their direct line of sight).
- Passengers who are not in the gate area 15 minutes prior to departure can lose their seats, to be given away to standby passengers. It appears they arrived less than 15 minutes to scheduled departure.
- Most likely, though, they were removed from their seats even before that. American Airlines software (‘AURA’ or the AUtomated ReAccommodation Tool) removes passengers from flights before they even miss them when the airline’s computers projects they’ll miss them.
This lets them give the seat to another passenger that wants to get on – and do it earlier, when it won’t delay the crucial last minutes prior to departure. Most likely the delay of the Cancun – Dallas flight made it look like the family would misconnect, and rebooked them onto a later flight, freeing up the seats for someone else.
This is terrible customer service. The family could have made the flight, despite their American Airlines delay. They rushed to the gate, found the flight still boarding, and were relieved – only to have that taken away from them because (1) their seats had already been given away and (2) gate agents wouldn’t take the time to help them understand what happened.
Update: American Airlines shares a statement, which also suggests it wasn’t an automated removal from the flight.
Our conditions of carriage state that boarding ends 15 minutes before departure and that seats are subject to reassignment if you’re not on board at that time. On April 21, this customer arrived at the gate 10 minutes prior to departure, with the remaining members of the party arriving 9 minutes prior to departure — after their seats had already been assigned to standby customers. Though we never want a customer to miss a flight, we were glad to re-accommodate these customers on the next flight to New York (LGA), and they arrived about an hour later than planned.
This family was treated as being completely unreasonable, expecting to board a connecting flight when it was still boarding and they had boarding passes. It just seems like common sense, and since they don’t understand the inner workings of the airline they go looking for ways to make better sense of the situation. To them, “antisemitism” explains it – when in reality it’s customer-unfriendly policies and customer-unfriendly staff.
AA needs better software (and all US carriers could use a better ‘culture’ for actual ‘efficiency’ and ‘efficacy’ in operations.) Some of the better airlines out there, like KLM, can pull off a Schengen to non-Schengen at AMS in 50 minutes, with time to spare for a stroopwaffle. Most US carriers (and airports), no freaking way. MIA Caribbean to US domestic, I wouldn’t bother with a connect under 2 hours.
I’m with @L737, in that I’ll preemptively make changes to my itineraries if things are too tight (even if they might work out), because I really do not trust these US carriers to not screw me.
Sometimes, yes, it’s American, but the other day, with Delta’s subsidiary Endeavor having a mini-meltdown (June 5-6), I changed to American in order to get where I was going. When you see 4/5 flights getting cancelled and the one that makes it is 5 hours delayed, you should know better.
As to discrimination, that’s a serious charge, so if they genuinely feel that way, why not pursue a case, but I’m not sure it’s the real deal here. Just bad practices, not ‘bad faith,’ so to say.
Honestly, I’m not surprised this happened on American Airlines. Their service has been consistently poor, and situations like this just highlight how far they are from ever being considered a premium airline. A big part of the problem is their internal culture—it’s toxic, dismissive, and leaves very little room for empathy or accountability.
Now, I get that none of us can say with certainty why those passengers weren’t allowed to board. But from some of the comments here, it’s clear many folks haven’t experienced what it’s like to move through the world as a minority. I can only speak for myself—and draw from my experience leading a nonprofit that did real work in this space and collected a lot of data—but I’ll tell you: discrimination is never the first conclusion people jump to.
Being singled out or mistreated because of who you are hits hard. It’s not something people want to believe is happening to them, and it’s not an accusation made lightly. It’s painful, isolating, and not easily forgotten. So when people say they felt discriminated against, that feeling deserves more than just a dismissive shrug or eye-roll. Especially when the airline’s customer service is so consistently awful that it actually creates an environment where that kind of treatment feels all too plausible.
Discrimination isn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it’s small, subtle things—being talked to differently, singled out for vague reasons, or watching others be treated better under the same circumstances. From what we saw in that video, it’s pretty clear that something was off. They weren’t treated the same, and it’s understandable why they’d walk away feeling hurt, excluded, and yes—discriminated against.
That doesn’t mean we all have to agree on exactly what happened, but let’s not be so quick to invalidate people’s lived experiences, especially in a situation where AA’s track record makes their behavior all the more questionable.
AA has no way to know whether a passenger is Jewish based on the record locator. The most likely reason was some non-revenues were on standby and the gate agents put them on the flight instead of the family running late.
If the family arrived less than 10 minutes prior to departure with 3 small children, even if the seats had not yet been released, getting this family onboard, seated, and their carry-on luggage stored *may* have caused a delay of the flight. If their seats had already been released at D-10, there would not have been time to get them new seats and get them onboard and settled without delaying the departure of the flight. I don’t believe this was antisemitism.
Generally if you arrive at the gate and your seats were already given to standby passengers gate agents won’t take the delay to sort it out, particularly if you’re in a group/family. That’s the way it is for good or bad.
How times have changed. Back in the 80’s I travelled a lot between Mexico City and Columbus, OH. I usually flew through DFW. One time, my incoming flight was delayed and I had less than 15 minutes to make the connection to a different terminal. As I arrived, there was an agent at the gate directing us to our destinations. The lady sent me to an AA bus waiting to take us to the departing terminal. Once at the terminal, I ran and made it just as the agent was closing the door. She held it open for me. As I got into the plane, I was confronted with tons of stares from the passengers that got their flight delayed so we could board. I quickly and sheepishly got into my seat.
Today, customer service is almost nonexistent. However, the average ticket back then cost as much as a business ticket today. What do we expect? Airlines today are really discount airlines with some premium seats.
This is why air travel is out of the question for me. Being herded through like cattle isn’t one of my goals in life.
I have no issue with and have a lot of miles with American Airlines, but all of us who fly anywhere should be aware of how they treat their customers so we can decide which airline to book. It would have been the same if American had reopened the door in friendliness to the flying family and we would judge them positively in the future.
I will now think twice about booking a multi-segment flight with American. (I did a stop in Orlando this morning on Jet Blue with a tight connection and late first leg — both I and my luggage made the second segment.)
I agree with the first comment. American Airlines is consistently the worst of all the legacy carriers. I avoid them whenever possible, even if it’s more expensive to book Delta or United. There’s always something that doesn’t work right on these planes.
I think you also need to take into account baggage transfer time between aircraft. Even if someone jumps off a delayed flight and runs to the gate it can take 30 mins to transfer baggage. Also the subjects were rebooked and arrived in NY an hour late. Not a big deal in my view.