Flight timings in USA
Hey. I was traveling recently and I had seen that flight timings in USA can be timed to the very minute, for example 1034. 1059, 1123 departure.
This is very uncommon in Europe as most flights are scheduled in increments of 5 mins. For example 0600, 0615, 0620 and so on...
Does anyone know why this is or why airlines schedule their flights to the very minute instead of rounding to the nearest 5?
Some random examples...
USA Examples
B6615 (10:59 JFK-SFO)
UA1142 (05:24 PHX-IAH)
AA1982 (06:18 FLL-CLT)
Europe Examples
BE843 (08:00 EDI-BHX)
UA998 (10:10 BRU-EWR)
KL1545 (09:25 AMS-LBA)
The above times are scheduled times and not estimated and some have different times throughout the week, but my question still remains. Of course there are still flights within USA that schedule to depart on the increments of 5.