PAXboy, I'm sorry if I sound naive to you. I fully appreciate and am aware of what you're saying. But again, these are only excuses. What I'm saying is should we the public accept this sort of "service" as the norm? If it was Ryanair at some distant little airport I'd say yes. However, with a major carrier at a major airport for me it's a resounding "no". Perhaps all those protesters against the greed of capitalism are right after all. Nevertheless, having flown AI in the past and found them to be OK, I will now most certainly have to reconsider using them in the future.