Airlines are adding capacity back in now, or at least were this summer. Still down from a few years ago, but look at any of the airline related performance numbers (available on any airline's website under the investor relations links for capacity deltas.) UA shed many planes in Chap 11. Returned to owners, sold to the 3rd world, retired completely...They even are using (check FT for the threads) planes parked in the desert for "seasonal" capacity. ExpressJet has 10 planes that are not part of their perm contract with UA in our fleet for summer needs.

How much addl added block time does one want, and at what expense? At the expense of system capacity when loads are already at critical levels? At the expense of those that claim there is too much schedule padding already (check FT for those threads)? What decision is good for UA, may not be good for each person's individual needs on a situational basis. One can always find fault with a network decision at one time or another, but rarely do we take back the complaint when that same decision helps us ("We need 2 seats to XYZ, and thank God UA added capacity, or else we would have had to pay 2x as much and travel at bad times" vs "they should have lowered capacity so they could have padded times, and I wouldn't have misconnected!")