Last Saturday we were booked with American Airlines to fly home from vacation.  

Between the time of the original booking and the flight American changed the flight times, narrowing our connecting flight buffer to 51 minutes. 

I was up half the night before worrying about the potential for missing the connection, but in my wildest anxiety I could never have conjured up the torturous gauntlet American presented to us. 

To my initial relief, the first flight was on time and we were all on the plane awaiting timely departure when the games began.  After sitting and waiting nearly a half hour we were told that the baggage was unbalanced and they needed to bring some of it up to the overhead compartments and we were asked to make room.  Everyone got up and put stuff under the seats and then they proceeded to reverse field and basically said "never mind" and we left (late) soon thereafter.   

When we landed in Miami we had 36 minutes to get from our arriving plane at Gate 60 to our New York flight clear across the airport at Gate10.  Realizing that the airport train shuttle could not work that fast we commandeered one of those transport carts which usually go whizzing by carrying a disabled or older person and then another when the first stopped. It was a wild ride to Gate 10!

All the while as we hustled along I was hoping the second flight would be delayed, but it was not and we made the flight one minute before they closed the doors.  Truly, one minute!

We found our seats and while we were congratulating ourselves on our assertiveness and resourcefulness we learned that they had just discovered a loose panel in the baggage area and Maintenance was "very busy". This caused a delay of over an hour.  This was the final straw. The combination of events was beyond stressful and frustrating. 

Amongst my many frustrated and angry thoughts lies the question: if we arrived after the doors closed would we have been allowed to benefit from the delay?  

The answer to that I will never know.  What I do know is that a flight which ended up being only an hour late took years off my life. Ugh!