Running Through The Santiago Airport

I'll start this from the end because its fresh in my memory.
David & I took our dream vacation (a hem... MY dream vacation) to the Southern Patagonia (Chile) ice fields -- San Rafael Glaciers.  I've never seen glaciers before and they were beautiful-so majestic.

On our way home we had a very tight connection in Santiago, Chile (Santiago to JFK).  Just one hour.  On the way there, it took us one and a half hours to go through immigration and check in for the domestic flight, so I knew we wouldn't make it.  Stressed out about it all the way on the last day.

Of course the first domestic flight was 12 an hour delayed and when we arrived in Santiago there was no gate for us to pull in to.  The stewardess had told us we'd be ok and drew us a map.  As we debarked she asked a security girl to help us find a LAN Airlines person to bring us through security.  Outside of the plane there were five young gate attendants and it was clear their job was to help people board the plane quickly.  They argued in Spanish and no one wanted to help us. I could tell they were all saying, I have to stay here.   I flashed our boarding passes with the time and said "We're going to miss our plane" - I wanted to run myself, screw them.

Just then the head stewardess came out and must have said something to push them, so one of them said, "I'll take you".  She looked at our boarding passes and said in her Spanish accent, "please run".  NO SHIT.

We ran like hell, a classic OJ Simpson airport scene.  I was sweating to death, David almost couldn't make it [btw, our luggage didn't make it].  She took us right up to the front of immigration and there was no line in security--David ran out of security with his belt still off.  They changed the gate vs. what was on our boarding passes, we found the monitor, had to run the other way..............................Saw the gate.  Our flight was scheduled for 11:05 & it was 11:00.  WE MADE IT!

There were about 8 people behind us all huffing and puffing and looking like they were going to have a heart attack.  An old woman yelled at the final boarding security check-point people and said she wasn't going to do it because she would miss the plane (all in Spanish, this is what I think what happened).

Well we ran for nothing, as I had another "NOOOOOOOOOOO" harrowing experience.  A well dressed lady sitting in the last row (we were four rows from the back in economy, how painful), was being kicked off the plane by airport security.  Swarms of agents were on the plane at this point and I had no idea what was going on....  All of the passengers stared at her as she cried and screamed, "por favor....por favor...blah blah blah".  Oh how I wished I knew how to speak Spanish.  I tried to ask the Chilean families going to NYC for vacation what was happening but they didn't speak English.  We tried Google Translate but at this point, no service.  Finally a woman translated and said she had a fight over a seat or standing on line, or something like that and had a really bad attitude towards the flight crew and other passenger & the Captain said she had to get off. This went on for 20 minutes and she wouldn't leave.  It looked like the steward was saying if you don't leave the whole flight will be delayed and all of the other women passengers were so catty--they waved their hands and said "get off"!!  She got up to go and cried and screamed in the aisle "por favor, por favor......." and other passengers tried to come to her defense...................She finally left.  At JFK while waiting forever for our luggage, I asked the steward what happened.  He said she was acting erratic and very rude to him and other flight attendants so it was better to take her off prior ---for fear she would do something nuts on route.   I guess we missed her acting erratic.  After that I obeyed every instruction to fasten your seat belt and sit upright for fear of being kicked off.