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.
Gary,
You wax poetic about AA’s new 787, but still can’t run a fucking (pardon my French) airline worth anything. That was criminal on the gate agent’s part.
It would be a cold day in hell before I fly that worthless airline. Oh, excuse me, I already won’t fly them anyway because they are truly worthless, in spite of buying a cool plane. What it comes down to are the people who they hire. Worthless people running a worthless airline.
lol connecting flights
gotcha’d
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.
American Airlines is the worst, period. Ill gladly take my chances on Spirit or Frontier before AA again. The employees are shitty, the airline itself is shitty Delta won my loyalty decade ago, because of the employees and how they treat you AA is a college course on how shitty Management leads to shitty employees and customer service.
We are headed to Europe this fall. Although we live in Dallas we will pay more to avoid AA. Don’t want to have a holiday ruined by those clowns. And I have reason to be skeptical: a similar situation happened to me on a DFW LHR flight and I was booked in F. Check-in desk worker took a break and there was NO ONE checking in pax at T-D. When someone finally did come back they said many of us were outside the check in window and denied us the ability to check in bags. Missed the departure altogether and they said if I rebooked on Saturday I’d have to pay a fare add. Went home, called United and got 1K status to match my AA ExPlat. Swore off AA and avoid them unless they are the last remaining option.
The solution to this problem is simple. Enforce IDB penalties if you have a confirmed seat and arrive at the boarding gate before the doors are closed. If that’s in place, AA will miraculously improve AURA so this doesn’t happen. If you arrive at the gate when boarding is underway with a boarding pass, you should be allowed to board ahead of standbys. Period. Even if there are small operational delays.
I’m curious. I don’t fly AA much (probably for good reason.) Could the passengers have gotten a supervisor to help? It doesn’t seem reasonable that if you have a confirmed reservation and are checked in that AA has the right to remove you from the flight simply because they think you won’t make it, if in fact you do make it. I can understand them insisting on T-10 if you are originating at the airport, but if you are coming from an AA connecting flight, so long as you are there before doors close, you should priority over anyone who was accepted from standby, even if that switch causes a delay (that will help to fix AURA too).
I’m a systems guy. The systems are malfunctioning here. There needs to be penalty or consequence to AA if a confirmed passenger can make the connection and AA denies them.
To say nothing of the horrid attitude of the employees.
Carl – in this case the standbys were no longer standbys, they had confirmed seats.
What happened here is at T-15 (or even a bit after) they processed standbys, confirming their seats and offboarding the expected missed / no shows. And by the looks of it they did wait a bit after T-15 to process the standbys, thus seeing that last standby board at T-9. The offboarded family showed up at T-10 and T-9.
This has seemed to happen more on AA, even before any new system. AA seems to have
1) The most aggressive policy regarding offboarding passengers who are not around the gate, or in-line
2) Crucially – the most passengers attempting to get in flights, via standby or some other measure
On point number 2, I consistently see more potential standby passengers milling about door entryways at American gates, hoping to get on the flights. These passengers often take up space while ticketed passengers may be sitting down, or not directly in the “gate area,” likely leading to more misses like this.
New rules about checking in on time. Gotta follow the rules in life. Now if they do it because a state senator needed the seat or their transporting a kidney or heart for a transplant well that’s another story. But if it’s for revenue or someone screwed up at airline well that’s another story
@JD > As we say in the south: Suck it up, buttercup.
Very well said. This person (I don’t care about him being a fat white jewish whiny little bitch) booked an untenable connection. 10 minutes late and they got to the gate 10 minutes before departure IN NEW YORK. A 20 minute international (Canun Arrival) in NEW YORK?
Of course he’s whining up a storm. There’s no IDB here because he wasn’t there, and his family was even a minute behind (what a great dad to outrace the family.)
Brings pride to the tribe. Pride in disgust that people won’t own up to being stupid, double down on stupid, and then try to blame their headgear.
He was only delayed by an hour? Oh the horror. Quick someone get Kim K to call DJT to get him a free 747.
No bigotry.
Happened to me in SFO (plus 2 other people on the same originating flight: that was delayed). We could see passengers still boarding behind the closed door. Apparently UA gave our seats to standby UA families. Took some shuffling but we got on board.
If American doesn’t care, I don’t care to take American.
Pretty sure that for ConciergeKey and maybe Executive Platinums, AA has the ability to “protect” them on a later flight while maintaining them on the original flight in this situation. Which suggests it isn’t a system limitation, but a policy, that prevents them from doing the same for AURA victims. They just don’t because they’ve prioritized clearing standbys earlier in the ridiculous T0 quest that drives so many of AA’s customer unfriendly policies.
What they should do is add simple logic to AURA that keeps the original seats for a subset of late-arriving passengers (those on an aircraft landing X minutes before the connecting departure – I suggest X be set by airport and could be as low as 15) while protecting them on later flights, and keeping the current system for everyone else.
The best part of this crap is the party arrived at their destination about 1 hour later than planned. Really ? … All this viral posting & religion baiting for a 1 hour delay ? Even more insulting to one’s intelligence. While the original connecting gate scene might not have been pretty, I’d consider the whole thing to be a happy ending. Sad how some scammers are so desperate for media attention and/or bonus. miles or the almighty $$$ that they stoop to this level, making it worse for the people who have ‘legitimately’ suffered true discrimination. It serves to perpetuate the injustice.
Hopefully AA can tell ’em to ‘pound sand’ .., and AA is certainly not a model airline or corporation by any stretch of the imagination !
Same thing happened to us on Delta but due to late arrival of our prior flight. Got to Gate and our seats had been given away. Because it was the Last flight of the day, we were given Hotel and Food Vouchers and what felt, at least, like a sincere apology as well as comfort seats on the morning flight.
I don’t see any evidence of antisemitism (I, too, am Jewish and wear a yarmulke all the time). This was the airline making a decision based on what it knew about the family’s itinerary and how long it would take the average person to travel from gate to gate. Some people wouldn’t have made the flight. Was American right to do this? No. But I can understand why they did. I am sorry this happened to them
Gary,
Yes, it was a complete failure of customer service. And the part that is critical for me was that their flight was delayed which caused them to be late to the gate. Since they were flying all legs on American, the Dallas team could have known that their inbound flight was delayed and they could have known that it had landed long before their seats were given away. Everything from beginning to end was American’s fault.
And the self-congratulatory statement AA issued honoring themselves for getting the family on the next flight is pure corporate-speak BS.
I don’t know anything about the software systems airlines use but I do know humans and I know customer service…this was not a failure machines it was a failure of humans. They could have and should have done better.
This is nothing unusual, and it happens at DFW with AA often in my experience. Many times I’ve had tight connections there and made it to the gate with 10 to 15 minutes, and they had already given my seat away. I think the gate agents have something that shows connecting passengers that are going to miss their connection under 15 minutes, so they give away the seats proactively. I notice this more when arriving in seats close to the front and rushing to the other gate, and mostly when the gate happens to be close by, where they assume you won’t get off the plane in time, etc. The last time this happened to me I got off the incoming flight and the connecting gate was the next gate over and I rushed up with exactly 12 minutes to closing and the gate agent looked at me and said “hold on” and instructed me to stand to the side for a couple of minutes only to tell me at like 9 minutes that they gave away my seat.
Oh, and this isn’t racist or anti-anything, just crappy customer service. In other words, it’s not you, it’s AA.
What would really solve this is if they didn’t allow such tight connections and didn’t jump the gun for standby passengers.
This happened to me in Philly. The TSA line was so long, it went entirely across the sky bridge to the other side. It was a random Friday in May at 0530. By some miracle, I got to the gate with 19 mins to spare and the gate was still open. They wouldn’t let me on the plane. I was on the verge of tears. They obviously gave away my seat but for some reason wouldn’t just say that which infuriated me more bc if that wasn’t the case, you would let me on. Ironically, this was Delta. They tried to book me a flight for 6 hrs later. My luggage was already on the plane. I just couldn’t do it. I booked the last seat, a first class, super expensive seat, on an AA flight leaving in 2hrs. While standing in line for food, I booked an appointment for Pre Check. Glad I didn’t take that 11am flight bc it was delayed in Detroit(connection) and didn’t get to my final destination until close to midnight. They probably wouldn’t tell these people they had given their seats away also. If it’s the case, just say so. Yes, we’ll still be angry but at least it will ‘make sense’. Sucks this happened to them.
Sorry. Meant “…with 10 mins to spare…”
Duh. Yes, theres’ such a thing as “Stand by” status and there has been for the last 70 plus years! This is industry wide. People who want to get on an earlier flight. People who work for the airline.
You have to be at the gate 10 minutes prior to departure or yes, your seats can be given away. If you are connecting and your inbound flight will be late, the agents at your departure point can advise the downline statation.
But if you are simply late, yes your seats can be given away. And should be.