well to answer your question dave, i ended up having her book me on the later flight which had less than 50 minute in between my connections in seattle. first she wanted to send us to a different counter but i was pretty firm on she changing the flight and checking the bags in. the thing i still don't get is we got there right at or before the 45 mintue cut off time. she managed to spend 5 minutes arguging with us. i had some close calls before, and the agents' initial reaction was to get me on right away. this one was different and said nothing about me being a DM or a MM status.