First, let me just head off the expected critique of the actions that precipitated this. Yes, we all know it's important to get to the airport early.

My sister showed up at a small, outlying airport (TXK) to check in for an early morning flight. I've used this airport myself; there are only small commuter flights on American Eagle. Check-in, the gate, and security are basically all one room. So there's no walking or anything. She showed up for her flight and needed to check a bag. The party in front of her was not a fluent English speaker, and was arguing with the agent. She waited behind them for 5-10 minutes, then suddenly the agent said, "Sorry, I can't check you in or your bags. You have to check the bags at least one hour prior to departure. It's now one hour, and the system has closed down. I'm unable to do anything else for this flight." So they all had to be re-routed on the next flight, which was a nightmare because a mechanical then caused an EIGHT HOUR delay while waiting for a part to be flown in, for which she received NOTHING.

Anyhow, what is the actual baggage checkin limitation? I tried looking on the website, and I know there's a limit, but I couldn't find it. Is it really true that the agents are disabled from doing anything with the flight after the time limit expires? Is it really one hour? She was treated so poorly she was trying to avoid AA for her next flight by departing from a different airport, but now UA has refused to change her connecting flight in IAH to a non-stop from SHV without a big upcharge. At least, they didn't offer any such option on her booking, despite the fact that they canceled her outbound SHV-IAH and IAH-DEN because of the imminent weather.

I thought I should rely on the AA experts here to suggest what she could/should have done. (Of course, now she's going to the airport WAY earlier than necessary to make sure this doesn't happen again.)

 

If her final destination was domestic cut off time is 45 minutes, I believe the system has a grace period of three minutes built in but after that …. If her final destination was international then cut off is sixty minutes

Are you sure she was at the counter in time? Compensation is tough because she arguably missed the first flight and in a gesture of good will was rebooked on a later flight, there is no legal compensation due and AA might argue they already gave her the good will gesture by rebooking her for free

 

Well, it's all secondhand, but she says it was one hour and she was there before that. She said it was the lengthy discussion in front of her that pushed her (and the people in front of her) over the "deadline." I suppose she could be misremembering, but she said it was an hour. Do you know if this story about the checkin system being completely disabled at the luggage check cutoff is true?

 

Is there a self-service check-in kiosk at TXK?

 

The criteria isn’t to be at the airport prior to cut off but rather to be checked in prior, so maybe she was at the airport an hour prior to flight time but was not at the counter and checked in by the 45 minute cut off time, had she at least checked in on line?, if not then I think the system begins to auto off load passengers, the system in fairly automated, like I said above I think there is still a three minute grace period built in, I believe a supervisor can over ride but the ground staff is charged with getting the plane out on time and in all honesty has no real incentive to try to get late passengers on a flight, if she had not checked in at all it is more complicated because she might well have been off loaded and stand bys processed

Keep in mind too that at a small regional airport you might be dealing with contract workers rather than AA employees, they might not have the knowledge or tools to override the system

 

Yes it is a pretty hard computer cutoff. In addition at a small airport, the people at the check in desk may need to leave the desk to go to the gate to get the plane out on time, and with AA's all encompassing desire to meet ontime departure unfortunately it doesn't give employees a lot of leeway..

Be aware if she switches to UA their cutoff times have just changed to 60 minutes for domestic and 75 minutes for international. And just like with AA, this means fully checked in, not just in line to check in.

Sorry this happened to your sister. If the employees were rude to her, there is never any excuse for that and she should write in and report that at least.

 

There is a hard cut off time as posted above depending on international vs domestic and the computer won't let the agents be flexible with that. That being said, I've been in a similar case where the agent (supervisor maybe) hand wrote a luggage tag and took it so I could make my flight. The second time I was SOL and had to be rescheduled for the next day.
Both times I had been in line before the cut off time but, as seems to be the case here, the passengers ahead took way too long, and I was past the cut off time by the time I made it to the front.
Bottom line is, leave yourself plenty of time for unexpected situations like these and you'll be less likely to miss bag cut off times, no compensation should be expected as none is due. Being rebooked on next flight is enough of a gesture from any airline in this case.

 

Thanks, all. I need to ask her about when she actually checked in. The info about the handwritten luggage tag is interesting; think about how enthusiastically AA agents gate-check bags when they don't need to. So maybe she didn't check in for the actual flight early enough. I can't remember if TXK has separate checkin kiosks, but knowing her, she probably didn't want to use those anyway. But now I know it's a 45 minute limit for the luggage on a domestic flight.

As far as compensation, if you read again my initial post, I'm not saying that's because of this initial screwup. It's because of the long mechanical delay.