Was supposed to fly SEA-SAN-JFK (AS36). On arrival at the airport, saw that SEA-SAN was delayed with only 25 minutes left to do the layover.

Went to the customer service desk at the C gates, first question was did I talk to a gate agent. Which one? The one in SAN, or perhaps the one in SEA for a flight that isn’t departing for another 3 hours?

Then asked what would happen if I got to SAN and the connection was missed. “They will book you on another flight”. Okay, what about sleeping? Am I just bumming it at the gate for the night, or will they offer some kind of hotel? “That depends on why the flight is delayed”. Uh, can’t you look that up and tell me? How am *I* supposed to know why the flight is delayed or what your policy is regarding this? “We recommend talking to the agent at the gate to see what options they can offer”. Yeah sure, let me waste 2+ hours at the airport waiting for an agent to show up while whatever remaining seats are left on alternate flights disappear.

Go to the customer service desk at the N gates. Having looked up alternate flights myself, immediately requested AS26, as the seat map showed 17F as available with 17E empty. My seat on AS26 was 17A with the entire row empty. This one started off even worse. “Well SAN is a small airport, so you should be able to make it” (I have a habit of cutting it close with flights but 25 minutes is too close even for me). “I can put you on AS22 in a middle seat or 16A which doesn’t recline”. Ummm…online seat map for AS26 shows much better options. “Well I see only 2 open seats, what online doesn’t show you is there are people who booked a different class of ticket, economy, and they don’t have a seat assigned yet, so you can’t pick those seats”. What??? Gave me the same nonsense about how I would be dependent on gate agents at SAN (would there even be any as AS36 is the last flight of the night?) to accommodate me and that it depends on the reasons for the delay. Then tried to make me feel like I was being unreasonable for wanting a window seat just to match what I had on the original flight.

Then after “strategizing” for 5 more minutes, somehow produced a boarding pass for 17F on AS26.

Is this normal? Am I really just expecting too much here?

As a side note, SEA-SAN got delayed further and AS36 left 5 minutes early, leaving a transfer time of 10 minutes (aka zero, because door closes before the departure time). Then AS36 got diverted to Phoenix for some reason and arrived at JFK 2 hours late.