deeruck

Why would a claim under Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations fail? Canada asserts their application to connecting flights outside Canada as long as it is a single fare.

USFlyerUS

The word "clearly" is a problem. Is there any evidence that shows the OP arrived 20 min before departure? The OP may have, but now it's a he said/she said issue. There would need to be some discovery to see when certain things happened (e.g., at what time does the system show the OP was removed? at what time does the system show stand bys were processed? etc.) before we can conclude a judge would necessarily side with the OP. I've seen lots of people sue in small claims court, thinking their case was a slam dunk, only to lose when they offered nothing but conclusory statements. The better route is to try to work this out with AA. The key is finding an agent who actually reads and understands the issue.

moondog

AA surely has the ability to produce such evidence (e.g. CCTV tapes and/or the time stamp of when the passenger was offloaded in its computer system). If it keeps quite about these things, well...

USFlyerUS

Right - and that requires discovery if the OP files a lawsuit, which itself could take well over a year at this point with most courts still backlogged from having been shutdown due to COVID.

moondog

While I don't have a great deal of experience in this area, I'm not familiar with any small claims courts that are really into discovery. The OP could briefly note that she asked AA to produce evidence (and was rebuffed) in her filing. At that point, "she said" would seem to have the upper hand.

js1993

If OP files in small claims court, AA undoubtedly will do those time-stamp checks on its own and respond/settle/fight accordingly.

ty97

OP, I'm sorry this happened to you.

People need to stop making excuses for bad airline behavior. (This is not unique to the AA forum)

Sparty3

Sorry for the naive questions, but can you elaborate how that works?

If the flight was not overbooked, and let's say they gave away even 1 of 3 of our business class seats to someone with status. Wouldn't they have been able to re-arrange us in the now available economy seats?

Why would there be (so many) passengers on standby if there were seats available?


Rule 67 as someone pointed out states the boarding cut off time is 10 mins.

Sparty3

No. There was no scan of our boarding passes.

We handed them to the agent who before even looking at it said "this flight is closed, we gave away your seats"
My husband said something along the lines noting the time (again somewhere between 10:40am-10:45am) and the fact we checked in bags and are flying in business class
Another agent who was milling around said "well if you are flying business class and didn't board when we called your zone that's WHY we gave away your seats"
Again, they told us to step aside (as in away from the door).
This is when we watched people lined up at the desk retrieve their boarding passes and board.

I do not recall anyone even touching our boarding passes until they closed the door.

Sparty3

Unfortunately the CTA has an 18 month backlog.
I don't know if I should file with both DOT and the CTA incase one ping pongs me back to the other one

I'm too new to FT to post pics or links. But we still have our boarding passes. There is nothing stamped or written on it except for when the agent who checked us in circled the gate.

No. There was no scan of our boarding passes.

We handed them to the agent who before even looking at it said "this flight is closed, we gave away your seats"
My husband said something along the lines noting the time (again somewhere between 10:40am-10:45am) and the fact we checked in bags and are flying in business class
Another agent who was milling around said "well if you are flying business class and didn't board when we called your zone that's WHY we gave away your seats"
Again, they told us to step aside (as in away from the door).
This is when we watched people lined up at the desk retrieve their boarding passes and board.

I do not recall anyone even touching our boarding passes until they closed the door.

ijgordon

(Involuntary) Denied Boarding (IDB) Compensation is regulation-required compensation only relevant in specific circumstances, one of which is that the flight was oversold - which means more people checked in for the flight than there were seats on the airplane. It was designed specifically to protect passengers from airlines overbooking flights, which many typically do because often there are no-shows and they'd rather not fly with empty seats. It was not designed to address any OTHER situation where you are removed from the flight.

There are a number of reasons passengers would receive boarding passes with seat assignments at the very end of boarding regardless of whether the flight was oversold or not; they may or may not have been considered "standby" passengers. (1) Employees traveling "non-revenue" with free travel privileges, (2) Passengers voluntarily standing by for an earlier departure who did not pay for a confirmed flight change, or could not because of lack of availability (e.g., the flight was full, overbooked or nearly full), (3) Passengers involuntarily standing by because their original flight was canceled or delayed and the flight was full or overbooked, or (4) Basic economy passengers confirmed on the flight but who could not get seat assignments at check-in because the flight was overbooked. #1-#3 are "standby" passengers, #4 is not.

moondog

Sparty3 The upshot of the last post is that so much as mentioning the term IDB during your conversations with AA/DOT, etc would be counterproductive.

Jeff767

The key is the time. If 10:45 you were late and don’t have a case. If 10:40 you should have been boarded. As I posted in other posts there will be a computer record of when they canceled your seats. If canceled at 10:44 or earlier you have a solid case as they clearly did not wait until 15 prior before removing you from the flight.

Sparty3

Agreed. It was def before 10:45.
I�ve asked AA for evidence to see when they removed us from the flight.

fastflyer

So to refresh memory, here are the main points
- OP arrived at gate area around 10:35am aka T-25 for the 11am departure (T=11:00); Boarding time was T-35 and probably started even earlier. T-40 is typical if the plane is present and empty at an outstation.
- Final call was happening; an obstructive person (not a confirmed pax) blocked OP's access to the gate for several minutes
- When they got to the front, around T-20, the GA said the flight was closed and had apparently offloaded no-shows and was processing stand-by pax -- this is usually done by a second GA. This is the time to make a lot of noise because this is not supposed to happen until final call T-15 but it does happen on AA as early as T-25 in my personal experience. If the GA was doing final call, then that should have been a huge red flag to get on board immediately.
- All subsequent actions relate to the eventual way the OP got home, and they were refunded by AA which is what AA often does in this circumstance (and usually no more).

From the OP:
1. Note that AA is using the 30-minute gate arrival time "standard" which relates to international flights. While it is possible that the Gate Agent called their names at T-30 (aka 10:30am) before they were at the gate area, that would mean that the GA had to notice that they were traveling onward to Canada. It's possible but unlikely for the GA to know that they were offloadable at T-30. (But maybe this was a rules-oriented GA, or maybe doesn't like Canadians.) It is unusual, but it is part of the CoC.
2. Likelier Explanation. The fact that a pair of first class seats was offloaded early makes me think there was a pair of irrop travellers ticketed in first asking at the gate for availability starting right at boarding at T-40. I have observed this type of interaction before -- and the GAs, wanting to please the people in front of them, might have done this. After noting the missing F pax international cxn, the GA could have legally offloaded OP at T-30 as the rest of the pax were boarding. But the GA almost certainly would have announced the OP names on the tannoy. This is often done under the guise of a passport check. International pax must be at the gate at T-30 even for a domestic connection. However, OP admits they didn't get to the crowded and noisy gate until T-25 so we will never know if an announcement for Mr. and Mrs. OP was made before then.
3. Someone upthread says they saunter over from the Admirals Club at boarding time T-30 or later. I won't risk missing a flight for five extra minutes in the club personally, but YMMV.