Flight time is gate to gate... For those that were debating that earlier in the thread.

Padding flight time does decrease aircraft utilization. Think about it, if an airline has 500 airplanes flying five flights today and every flight is overscheduled 10 minutes, that is over 400 hours of wasted time a day. 400 extra hours of pilot pay, flight attendant pay, and schedule time that could've been used elsewhere.

So airlines decide: spend the minutes "buying" extra flight time or schedule extra flights and run them late if needed. It all depends on this week's strategy and business model (and what all the "super-smart" analysts say customers want).

*super-smart because they all have conflicting opinions.