Originally Posted by hbtr

But that’s exactly the issue. The problem usually isn’t the aircraft landing late, more often it’s the 30 minute taxi tour of the airport, or the gate being unavailable, or no staff to operate the jetbridge, or some other operational failure. Granted it’s not easy for an airline to plan for such variables when they calculate MCT values but my perception is that they are considering only potential air delays (partly addressed by padding arrival schedules) while neglecting the significant (and I suspect increasing) occurrence of such ground delays. I religiously avoid connections that are less than 1 hour (which sometimes means I need to choose a 3 hour connection), and I have lost count of the number of times that based on the actual gate arrival time or aircraft deboarding time I would have clearly missed the earlier connection.