I've had it with flying (at least until my next trip)

I decided to break up this rant into a couple of separate posts, just because I wouldn't have the attention span to read it all at once, so I wouldn't expect you to either. (Even though the average person has a way longer attention span than me.) So we're still talking about the recent trip to Cancun, but this one is about the flight home. Like I said in the last post, it was a surprisingly good trip, but it wouldn't have been complete for me without some kind of drama. I got my wish on our last leg flight back home. Do you remember the days when, if your connection was running late, the crew would contact the next flight to let them know you were on your way, and they would hold the plane until you got there? Well, apparently, that must somehow lead to terrorism, and had to be stopped. (At least by American airlines, yeah, I said it.) So we were originally supposed to leave Cancun for Miami, and then from there, home to Kentucky. When we checked in, however, the girl at the counter noticed that we would only have an hour layover in Miami, and may not make the connection. She decided to put us on a plane to Dallas instead, and then home. Fine with me, I don't care how I get there, just so long as I do. This flight change would give us a more comfortable, yet still tight, hour and a half layover. We leave on time, there is no bad weather or problems that we know of on our 2 1/2 hour flight to Dallas, yet we somehow manage to be a half hour late. (I guess some old fart must have been driving the plane, and refused to go the speed limit.) So now we're back to a one hour layover. We hoofed it through the airport as fast as we could, but we had to go through customs, uncheck then recheck our bags (so incredibly retarded, by the way) and go to the opposite side of the airport via monorail system. None of these individual steps took very long, but the combo of having to do all of them put us arriving at our gate a mere 15 minutes before the plane was to leave. Great! We made it with a whole 15 min to spare! Wrong. When we get to the gate, there is no one there. The screen says that boarding is complete. WHAT? We still have 15 minutes! We ask the attendant at the gate next to ours if she could help us. Can you guess how that went? "I'm not the agent for that flight, I don't know anything." That apparently includes not knowing how to pick up a phone and dial someone that may know something. She directs us to an agent two gates down. "Maybe he can help you." So I stay at the gate, giving the moron dirty looks and mumbling things about not knowing how to operate a telephone, while my husband goes down the other gate. A few minutes later, a small woman appears from the jet way. As she comes up to the desk, another couple shows up in the same boat as us. We tell her that we need to get on that plane. She tells us that the plane is gone, and that's impossible. (Keep in mind we can see out the window, and the damn plane is still sitting there.) "But we still have 10 minutes!" I inform her. She then informs me that they finish boarding the plane 10 minutes before it leaves. "But we were here 5 minutes ago! You weren't!" I again educate her on the concept of time. She then proceeds to tell us that she knows who we are, she has our name on a paper in front of her, and they knew we were coming. "WHAT?" "If you knew we were coming, then why weren't you here waiting for us to arrive? Why weren't you holding the plane for a few minutes until we arrived? Why are you hassling me right now, if you knew we were on our way? WHY AM I STILL NOT ON THAT PLANE?" She says something that I can't make out because my ears are ringing at the sound of my own voice yelling, and the blood boiling in my head. She's on the phone with someone, thought I never heard her say anything to them. (I think she was faking it.) She then says something about the next flight leaving at 730pm (it was 1130am), and that sets off the woman of the other couple. I am now welling up with tears, refusing to sit in this airport for 8 hours. (That happened on our last trip, and it sucked hard.) Meanwhile, my husband sees me arguing with this woman from two gates down, and makes his way back to me. The frustration was welling up inside me (I just RAN through an airport for God's sake, and I DO NOT RUN!), and I'm not sure if it was that, the fact that the other couple had shown up, or if the guy two gates down had accomplished a miracle while he was on the phone, but magically the little woman I'd been screaming at for the last 10 minutes suddenly says, "OK." She tells us to run down the jet way behind her. It had already been pulled away from the plane, and the door was shut. She waved down the pilot, and pushed the jet way back up to the plane. We made it! Thank God. I just couldn't handle sitting in that place for 8 whole hours, after running to catch a flight that we had been on time for, only to miss it because of the douchey-ness of the employees of American airlines (yup, said it again). Now that we were on the plane (to the frustration of the other passengers that thought we were at fault for holding them up), I had time to calm down, and reflect on all that had just transpired. It made me more angry. First of all, this is still a customer service industry. We have the choice of airlines, and we chose yours. It's still your job to make us happy. Why, then, are you going to tell us that the flight leaves at a certain time, but neglect to tell us that we actually only have until 10 minutes before that to actually board the flight? And why would someone not be at the gate until that 10 minute mark? We made it with 5 minutes to spare, but because no one was there to let us in, we almost didn't make it. And it never should have gotten to that point because, second, if a connecting flight is late, and you know this, and you know we are in the building and on our way, and that holding the flight for just a few minutes would give us a chance to get there, then you should wait! I mean, we still managed to make it there on time, if you had just given us the chance. And, third, in the time that was spent arguing with me, we could've been on the plane and taxiing down the runway already. Those other passengers felt put out, but it wouldn't have had to be that way, if we had just been let on the plane as soon as that woman saw that we were there. The whole thing was a circus act put on by the performing turds of American airlines (#3), and could have been avoided if they had just wait 5 extra minutes. And to top it all off, the flight got into Louisville 15 minutes early, even after all that! I just don't understand what the point of all that was. Does us being a few minutes late for a flight (because your airline got us there late, for no apparent reason other than a Sunday driver and the wheel), pose some kind of risk to the plane. Is that extra 5 or 10 minutes going to somehow allow for a terroristic opportunity? Because if it is, please tell me. Otherwise, why don't you hold your damn horses and cater to your customers like you're supposed to. Was all that really necessary? Really?