Airline regulations
 

I thought I was a "seasoned" traveler but on a recent trip to London, the British airline I transferred to in SF refused to allow me and my son to board as we got there 55 minutes prior to take off (our plane from Fresno was 10 minutes late). Do other airlines have this and why wasn't I notified? Any ideas?

Every airline has their own rules. For international flights it can be as much as 2 or 3 hours ahead of time. Sorry about missing your flight, but if you only allowed an hour between flights -- that was cutting it much too short.

Hi m,

Bad on them.

They gave your seat away when you weren't there 1 hr ahead of time.

They knew your plane would be late.

They were probably overbooked and used this "rule" to not have to compensate someone who would have been bumped.

((I))

Question...

Couldn't you have been checked in through to your destination? What airline did you fly in onto SFO and what airline was your flight from SFO to LHR?

Hello maile, did you have two different tickets on two different airlines that did not codeshare. One airline from Fresno to SFO (such as say Southwest) and then British AL from SFO to the UK?

I remember about a year and a half ago a Fodorite in Oakland, CA took a large number of family members on BlueJet to JFK and then was going to fly on AirFrance (not sure of the airline but think it was that one). JetBlue was very late due to weather conditions. No fault of JetBlue. But this lady had to rebuy tickets to get her family to France and of course you can imagine how upset she was.

But if you travel this way the only "safe" way to do it is to get to the first arrival airport hours ahead of time or the night before which then of course means the expense of a hotel room.

I am not saying this was the case in your situation but think it might have been. I'm sorry for the problem you had. Hope you got to the UK in a decent amount of time.

I know it's semantics but it wasn't that they "did not allowed you to board", it was "not allowed to check-in".
If you were checked in, then boarding would not have been a problem at 55 minutes before the scheduled departure time.
I'm with others here and guess that you must have flown in on some discount airline that does not interline with the major airlines, meaning 2 separate tickets.
It's too late for you, but for anybody that's planning on doing this in the future, please allow yourself few hours connection time, AND, and I think this is the more important consideration, compare the possible savings of such a deal to the headache and possible huge expense if something goes wrong with your first flight.
Maybe it's more prudent to spend an extra buck or 2 and have the protection build in.
And BTW, codesharing, alliance partnership, etc, has nothing to do with interlining. AA can check me in on UA flight if I'm connecting. They are not partners in any way, as a matter of fact they competitors in many of the same markets, but they do have interline agreement and if your ticket was AA connecting to UA you would still be checked in all the way. It would work in reverse as well.
Most of the LCCs, such as Southwest, JetBlue do not have these agreements so they can't check you all the way through, they can't even check your luggage all the way through.