One negative effect is that this practice impacts the connections you are legally able to book. And this can lead to some very long layover times if you are unsuccessful in standing by for an earlier connection after you land significantly earlier than your scheduled time. There are, to be sure, worse things to contend with than an early arrival! But at the end of the day, these heavily padded schedules are just another example of UA marketing sacrificing service for sound bytes.

On the bright side, they do appear to have dropped that "We're No. 1" nonsense marketing campaign. Or have I just mentally filtered it out?