Originally Posted by
Ben and Jerry
I do believe Delta adds quite a bit of 'padding' to their schedule. I've had a lot of flights arriving ahead of schedule.
They pad the schedules a bit, but it’s extremely expensive to do so. Delta and most other airlines pay both their flight attendants and pilots based on block or better. This means if the flight is early the crews get the scheduled block time. If the flight is late they get the actual block time. In addition padding schedules reduces aircraft availability and requires the purchase of additional airframes. Balancing those costs against ontime performance and schedule reliability is a balancing act.