What bothers me is that many flights have been put on a "padded schedule." Many times, one would notice that they arrived at their destination 25-45 minutes or so early. This is because the airline decided to add additional minutes to the scheduled arrival time.

Even with this in mind, there's still an "on time" issue. I do find that boarding tends to take a very long time, and that the GAs many times wait until T-25min to board the flight instead of T-30. Often there's chattering at this point and no boarding.

I've noticed that the majority of the time when the flight goes under T-30, the GA makes no effort to explain to the folks sitting in the PA lane or waiting to board, the reason for the delay. Sometimes they don't even call the aircraft right away to see what the delay is.

I also notice that there is no public effort underway to address this problem.

In AA's defense though, their main operations are in the nations most congested airports (DFW, ORD, MIA, JFK, LAX). Same goes for DL who also is underperforming in ATL, JFK etc.