False information about duration and departure of flight
I regularly fly from a small airport to a hub that's 90 miles away. Flight crews frequently announce, "the flight is only X minutes", particularly when we're late. False!
First, the flight time that is mentioned always seems to vary. Sometimes it's 19 minutes; sometimes it's 24 minutes. But in reality it's NEVER that short. Frequently air traffic control will send us circling around the destination airport for a while, but even if we go straight from one airport to the other, it's never been 19 minutes. And the total trip time is at least 45 minutes, and often more than an hour, due to waiting and taxiing.
Second, AA uses that as an excuse to avoid serving drinks to passengers. No pre-departure drink plus no drink in the air because "the flight's only 19 minutes"--when it turns into total time on the plane of an hour.
And yesterday, one flight that I was on, for a 100-mile segment, was delayed by about 50 minutes. After 15 minutes, the flight attendants kept telling us, "We're just about to leave, in just a few more moments". 35 minutes after they first said, "We're just about to leave", we left.
AA, please give us accurate information!
"The flight, from wheels up to wheels down, might be as short as 19 minutes but usually it's 25-30 minutes, and then we taxi for up to 15 minutes at our destination."
"I'd like to be leaving soon, but I don't have a definite time. But before we can leave, maintenance needs to do X and Y, and then it'll be about 5 minutes of paperwork, and then we can be ready to push back."
Accurate information would definitely help with stress in case of a delay and a tight connection because then planner-types like me could plan out how to deal with the situation. False information isn't helpful-- and it deprives me of a drink!