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.
Exactly correct, Gary, it’s happened to me too (fortunately only once), and the direct cause is AA’s AURA. It’s reprehensible, immoral, unethical, and disgusting. AA will never be a “Premium Airline” until they eliminate AURA (along with a host of other needed improvements).
We should be replaced by robots, seems, employees don’t have the common sense, to do their jobs. Customer service is dead, companies don’t deserve, ant customers, they have now. Ever think if a company, would focus on customer service, they would make a profit, it’s a race to the bottom.
No antisemitism….. just terrible AA procedure.
Same thing happened to my daughter in MIA , they even loaded her luggage but gave away her seat and rebooked her for the next day…
So for my family: no more AA
Isn’t this a case of IDB and under DOT compensation rules?
This is NOT new to AA. Had exactly the same thing happen to our party of 4.about 6 years ago. Door was open. We were there. Seats were given away.
We were forced to wait 8 1/2 hours for the next available flight.
Haven’t taken too many AA flights since.
It’s an IDB situation, 100%, though doubt a DOT complaint will do anything nowadays.
Totally. The robotics are taking over! I hate the world we’re being drug into. The airlines no longer have any real competition we’re just chattel or cattle. Take your pick.
First of all, they’re the ones who booked a tight turn…if you book a connection with less than 1-hr, particularly thru the south/southwest during summer thunderstorm season, you’re an idiot. Second, jumping directly to racism is just screaming victim-mentality (and I’m a gay liberal saying that). As we say in the south: Suck it up, buttercup.
Why do people always have to come up with some explanation for poor customer service as it being “something about them” e.g. Jewish, black, etc. etc. It just amazes me.
This is a stupid policy that invites people to assume they are being discriminated against — you don’t have to be a loon to feel it’s personal when there is something about you that stands out (be it skin, hair, or clothing) and you see other people boarding but they won’t let you.
I agree with JimC and hate it when people jump to bigotry when bad service is the likely reason. But stoooopid policies like this lay the groundwork for those assumptions.
No Jews on my airline, nor Christians, nor Muslims, or anybody for that matter . . . no humans. Only dogs, cats and the occasional rabbit.
Talk about a prejudicial scenario. I suspect the lawyers are lining up to sue the airlines.
I recently had a delayed inbound connection to ORD. After reading and hearing stories like this and knowing it was clearly going to be close, I proactively switched to a later second flight hours beforehand. Turns out I would’ve just made the earlier flight with 60 seconds to spare (it helped that the gates were literally right next to each other).
But with things like this out of your control I feel like it’s not worth it. Didn’t want to get shafted on the second flight filling up either. Had a nice meal, walked around the terminals to compare UA and AA’s operations (hub wars!) and got in later that night with a whole less stress. I get that that not everyone’s itinerary and plans allows for that though. Tough situations, hope the technology improves. Certainly hope no discrimination was involved.
I would guess this is happening all around the AA system courtesy of their new automated program. Another shining example of the clueless senior management who care nothing about their customers. Maybe a big class action lawsuit and major Congressional involvement is the only way to get their attrition.
P.S. Where is Ted Cruz when you need him!!
Happens all the time on every airline. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.
@Gary you’re absolutely right about the unfriendliness of AA’s new automated tool, however on the other side are the standby passengers that have been cleared, also the family involved could have advocated for themselves better. On their delayed flight, they could have reached out to AA chat on their mobile devices as well as asked for an FA onboard to perhaps help them.
I have to agree that this was unfortunately software and procedure related. However this does not excuse the very poor AA customer service. They could have explained better what caused it AND because there were children involved they should have done something more to assist the family rather than only say “go to rebooking”, wherever that is, and likely wait in a long line. Maybe the gate staff could have called rebooking themselves, and explained the situation, and get some level of an expedited result for them.
Should be considered an IDB. So long as things like this are happening the predictor is being too aggressive. Or it’s acting before it has all the information (inbound is going to be too late–but the outbound is also late. I’ve landed after “departure”, yet been on the bird.)
And the real problem is antiquated systems, anyway. There is simply no need for this, change how the standbys are handled. There is no reason for the computer to have one and only one possible state. Instead, everything that needs to be done is written to a pending file. The person gets a provisional boarding pass. The tight connection shows up, they board, the provisional boarding pass is invalidated and the pending file deleted. The tight connection doesn’t show up, the people with provisional passes board at the end, the pending is written to the main.
1st observation is its nothing to do with religion.
The software needs to be reviewed, the computer knows the pax had arrived on an AA connecting flight. The staff at the counter know that too. They could have overridden the computer. Some agents become automatons. The fault lies with the airline
This is not an IDB situation since they were not at the gate 15 minutes prior to departure.
Gary, you are right. It’s probably not antisemitism. From a Jewish frequent flyer. I am annoyed that software allows people to book such tight connections. I never accept a connection with less than an hour’s change and that’s for the same airline in the same terminal. At least 2 hours for changing between domestic and international or vice versa.
I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago. Thankfully it was a mil ticket so all I had to do was call SATO. All you need to do is look at reported numbers for involuntary boarding. AA exceeded all other airlines combined for annual involuntary denied boardings. Simple solution, don’t fly AA.
When you have to clear customs, a 10 minute flight delay is noise.
Since AA merged with USAir (&took their management) the bean counters have taken over, “don’t spend a penny you don’t have to” reduced the number of agents ( pay them less) and hire to the lowest common denominator. Until there is a change in management and attitude it won’t get better. There is no pride in customer service anymore, with a few exceptions if one’s lucky.
Seems like one customer service or operational embarrassment on AA every day or so. What us going on with that once excellent company?
@Kai Roediger- that’s where we had the issue also.
Is there a pattern there?!!
It’s quite obvious that the problem is that the AA profile does maintain data on the speed in which each passenger can complete the 100 yard dash! With the average 100 yard dash speed added to the profile, AURA will be better equipped to determine which passengers will really miss the flight and which can run the gauntlet prior to “doors closing”.
I really dislike it when people use race, religion, gender, or other identity factors to make their case. The article conveniently omitted the time they arrived at the gate. As someone who frequently flies, it’s not unusual to hear gate agents paging passengers for their respective flights because doors are about to close. There’s a strong possibility that this situation occurred, and if they arrived 10 minutes late, their seats may have been released to standby passengers. That means standby passengers could have been boarding the flight at the time when they arrived at the gate.
On the other hand, American Airlines could have delayed the connecting flight by a few minutes to accommodate connecting passengers who were delayed. However, this decision depends on whether there are connecting passengers on the outbound flight and how long they can delay without jeopardizing downline connections.
Using accusations of antisemitism does not help to validate your claim; in fact, it does the opposite.
Same thing happened to us on United through Chicago (international to domestic where the plane was 90 minutes late arriving ). We ran like crazy, asked people to let us cut in the security line and got to the gate while there were still 20-30 people boarding only to be told that our seats had been given away because the computer said we were not going to make the connection. It would have been nice to know that we were offloaded so we wouldn’t have rushed. Point being, other airlines do this, too.
My favorite from AA was the other week at DFW where the family in line in front of me was connecting from the plane we all got off to the very same plane at the very same gate and AA’s genius computer system gave their seats away. When they went up to customer service the agent said “this is too complicated I’m going on break” and would have walked away except a supervisor was there and said “no you are not, help them.” Fortunately the supervisor was able to help them get on the flight, but this is just another anecdotal example of AA’s horrendous software and ground staff. In fairness to the ground staff AA management seems to have a philosophy of not empowering them to help customers, so many take the “why should I do anything extra” approach. The only good staff culture is found at Admirals Clubs.