I had a puzzling experience on my flight today.

My carry-on luggage did not fit in the overhead bin of my express jet, and I was not given a tag at the gate (annoying, but it happens!) so I got off the plane, went back to the gate, got a tag, left it on the jetbridge, and came back to my flight. Standard story that I have gone through many, many times.

But this time, the flight attendant stopped me from getting on the flight, and told me that the protocol dictates that once a passenger is out of eyesight from the flight attendants outside the plane, they are not allowed back on.

I had never heard of this before (I don't fly nearly as much as most of y'all here, but I came close to making the Star Alliance gold status last year, and I think that I'm in good shape to getting there this year, so I'm not a complete novice in traveling).

So, the flight attendant told me that there was "physically[sic] no way for him to get me back on board", yet did not suggest anything for me to do. Then we just stared at each other. For around 5-10 minutes. Then the gate manager came, I don't know what they did, but they eventually let me on board.

As I was getting off, I told him that I thought the least he could have done was to suggest something for me to do, and that I respect the safety protocol and have every intention of following it, but that it was frustrating to feel so helpless in that situation. He started yelling at me, the pilot joined in, and they said that I could get arrested for international terrorism.

Were they threatening me, or is this actually valid?

I am not sure if this is a valid piece of information, but I think that I was the only non-white passenger on that plane, which was traveling from a southern US city to another southern US city. I am a petite Asian woman in her 20s (around 110lbs), and both the flight attendant and the pilot (white males) physically towered over me, and they were both yelling at me for politely making a complaint.

A quick Google search brought me to this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-1066102.html
which suggests that most airlines/flight attendants have no problem letting people de-board, then re-board.

Thanks for your help. While this is my first post on here, I read a lot of threads from here