#3 is a little annoying, especially when the airline is uncommunicative. It’s natural to assume that an N hour departure delay will cause you to arrive N hours

#3 is a little annoying, especially when the airline is uncommunicative. It’s natural to assume that an N hour departure delay will cause you to arrive N hours late, and that your connections or other plans will be thrown off accordingly. However, that’s not often true—-schedule padding and changes in flight plans[0] often make up for some of the difference, though they often don’t tell you this until you’re in the air. It would be great if more gate agents could give you an expected departure AND arrival time during delays. [0] I would not be surprised at all if the airlines explicitly trade off fuel costs vs. the costs of compensation. In other words, if you’re already late, don’t waste fuel try to make up all of the lost time, but use just enough to avoid a compensation-triggering delay.