Reading Splitter's story in the "Bugging You" thread reminded me of a very similar story. Last April, a bunch of people from my wife's work attended a conference in Vegas, and most significant other tagged along. Most of her co-workers took a flight from Madison that connected in Denver, both ways. It was too expensive for me, so we didn't. On the way home, their flight left pretty much on time...maybe 5 minutes late. When they got to Denver, their connecting flight had already departed...it departed EARLY! Since they weren't there during boarding, the airline gave away their seats. For some reason, they couldn't get on a flight to Madison, Milwaukee or even O'Hare. They ended up flying to Midway...late the next day, taking a cab to O'Hare, just to miss the last Van Galder bus of the day back to Madison. They ended up renting a car, and forgetting to pull off to pay a toll at a toll booth. And this airline that left early because they weren't there 15 minutes before the flight was to depart? United.