[PHXFlyer]

60 minutes is the cutoff time for checking in for an international flight. If you arrive at the counter or a kiosk (not the car park or merely standing in line) less than 60 minutes before departure of an international flight they will no longer accept you for the flight. Mattkay merely mis-read this as suggested arrival time rather than minimum.

Newark is a notoriously busy airport especially, as CO's website suggests, during peak travel days and seasons. Arriving 1 hour and 25 minutes before an international flight is cutting it very close even on a regular day. For a domestic flight I arrive at least 90 minutes prior and I get to use the elite checkin and security lanes. I too believe Mattkay isn't taking enough personal responsibility for causing the missed flight. Once the flight was missed I don't think Continental could have done anything right from the perspective of this person.

...wouldn't it have been logical to have more employees trained and ready for this busy day??

Just where do you believe they should get these employees? US based airlines have laid off between 5 and 15 percent or more of their total workforce over the past year.

And they're calling out destinations left and right...all of them, but not ours, moving everyone called to the front of the line.

They probably called out your destination before you even entered the line. At least they were being proactive about processing those who were in jeopardy of missing their flights first. Yet you say there was a lack of customer service that day?

I went up to a 'red coated gentleman' and asked when our flight will be called. There were 55 minutes until flight time. He says you have missed your flight. We closed it, he said.

60 minutes prior to departure as your e-ticket confirmation said.

When we were walking over to the gate, after security, we met another family of 5, a family of 3 and 2 ladies that ALL had the same thing happen...To boot, we find out that Continental had overbooked the flight anyway and beyond that, there were other stand bye's that were from domestic and international connection misses. Needless to say, we waited in vain, and watched as people that were ticketed were actually booted off the flight also (lured with a beginning offer of $500 airline credit which was raised to $900 per person...gee, did Continental feel guilty here? , plus hotel, car, food vouchers and flight tomorrow).

So there were 14 people who missed the earlier flight because they did not arrive early enough at the airport yet you question the logic of overbooking? Were it not for overbooking your flight would have gone out with at least 14 empty seats plus the ones from the mis-connected flights.

We then walked down to try to get our bags. Another nightmare! The gate attendants said they'd be on carousel 9. We went there, waited 30 minutes. Nothing. Then we went to baggage customer service. Two attendents at the counter there. One was nice but totally misinformed us...we waited again another 30 minutes and nothing happened. I then went to the other attendant, older and clearly more experienced. She said that she didn't understand why her co-worker told me what she had, and then this one made 4 phone calls, located our bags, which had been sent to 'performance' would be released to carousel 9 in about 30 minutes.

So you were told by the gate agents our baggage would be delivered to carousel 9. You then got impatient, accused yet even more employees of not being "customer focused" but ultimately the bags showed up on carousel 9 just as promised. You blame a lack of training but this is clearly a lack of patience on your part.

So, after a total wait of 2.5 hours for our bags, 1.5 hours for a stand-bye flight that we should never have been put on, and 1.5 hours of futility caused by Continental not having enough trained employees on staff this morning, we wasted a morning of our lives. We disappointed our children.

As mentioned before Continental and most other US based airlines have been laying off employees. Since layoffs are usually in reverse order of seniority your assesment that the employees aren't trained doesn't hold water. Also I hope your kids learn a valuable lesson from this. Had it not been for your late arrival at the airport your 5 1/2 hour "ordeal" could have been averted.