Coming home from Tulsa last night, I had a tight connection in MSP. Of course, the TUL-MSP was late, and I got to the gate for MSP-BDL about nine minutes before departure. They'd given away my nice exit row seat, and happily placed me in a comfy center seat for the ride over to Hartford.
Annoying to say the least, but at least I got home. That center seat was literally the last seat on the plane. What if they'd given that to someone else, and I'd been left without a seat? By the rules, I wasn't at the gate 10 minutes before departure, but that was through no fault of my own. Would I have been entitled to denied boarding compensation? If not, sounds like a nice little loophole for the airline.
