A couple of weeks ago, my flight arrived at JFK 10 minutes prior to my connecting flight to EZE and was informed that the flight was closed (at the arrival gate). However, the flight to CDG was delayed to accomodate a number of passengers who would have otherwise misconnected.

If someone had met my flight and escorted me, I could have made it to the gate in time or maybe a couple of minutes late. I didn't have any checked baggage and didn't need to change terminals. Although I would have had to incur a 24-hour delay while waiting for the next AA flight, nothing proactively or otherwise was done to help me.

I also had to insist on being accomodated on the LAN flight via Santiago (which was only a 7-hour delay) which a number of agents at JFK weren't willing to do because I was on an award ticket, but finally found someone who checked and got the ok from AAdvantage and I barely managed to make the LAN flight. Although the LAN flight had been closed for check-in 15-20 minutes before I reached the check-in counters, they were nice enough to allow me to check-in.

Needless to say, I wasn't happy about my experience that evening (not because AA didn't hold the flight for maybe a few minutes -- although that would have been nice, but the way they handled the misconnect).