Thanks to everybody for all the advice!
Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
My advice would be a short, factual letter to Aeroflot summarising the event. <...> Keep details to the absolute minimum: you followed the advice on the website; with only hand luggage you arrived 1 hr before departure; security refused to let you through; the discussion with the desk agent took so long that you missed the flight. <...> Then request, in this order: (a) clarification of the website advice, (b) that this advice be changed if it is not factual (eg, if there is a local policy at JFK, the website should reflect that) and (c) compensation for any direct costs of the delay (buying another ticket, hotel costs, cancellation of bookings in Moscow, etc).
Thanks. I'll do this. (Part of the problem, of course, is that there are two parties involved in this mess — the airline and the airport — and in my conversations yesterday they basically ended up blaming each other. Surprise, surprise.) I won't lie though: I did not arrive 1 hour before departure (50 min is more like it — but when everything works as it should work, it's quite enough. Obviously, any "real" security delays would be my own risk, which I willingly take: I have to work, not only fly...).
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Does Aeroflot offer electronic boarding passes?
Apparently not for international flights, and certainly not out of JFK.
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
BTW, does anyone know of other airlines at JFK (T1) whose OLCI printed boarding passes aren't accepted by TSA? Is SU the only example where we know that this has occurred? In particular, did the OP notice TSA accepting other boarding passes that were printed during OLCI before coming to the airport?
Good question. Sure enough, not only did I notice TSA accepting OLCI BPs at T1 before — I've used them dozens of times myself, without a slightest issue. I do believe though that all of those occasions were with AF. The lady at the checkpoint told me "unofficially" that apparently they only accept such BPs from AF and LH. Which, if this is indeed the case, kind of shifts the blame from SU onto T1 (although it doesn't change the fact that what I have been told by SU, on their website and in their email, is a lie).