My wife and I were flying STL-DTW-CDG-SOF the other day. Flight was at 6:20pm. We arrived at airport via light rail at 5:18pm, were at SP counter to drop bags ( we had done OLCI that morning)at 5:22. The agent there was busy assisting a family with two kids who would be flying by themselves and told us it would take her a while. So we went across the way to the regular check in section and after a few minutes an agent there tried to print our bag tags but was unsuccessful. She called another agent who told us that we were too late and that we should have dropped bags an hour ahead of our flight. He called the redcoat on duty who told him the same and then said we had two options - leave our luggage behind or get rebooked (which at this point would have meant losing at least one day of our trip). He even started rebooking us and told us there was no way we would get on our flight. I just grabbed our documents and went back to the SP line where that agent was still working on the UMs.

When we explained the situation to the SP agent she shook her head, smiled, said there was plenty of time, and in less than a minute we had two bag tags. And 5 minutes later we were at the gate, even before the plane pulled in.

So have we (PM and GM) who travel a fair amount and never get to the airport too early, been doing something wrong for years? I see 60 minutes are the deadline for checkin but does that count baggage? And even if we had arrived 61 minutes ahead of our flight we would have waited in line. Furthermore, while our final destination was international, our first flight was domestic. Suffice it to say this experience was quite an unpleasant surprise esp in STL where the DL folks have been good to us.