...society in general is prepared to wait a few hours every so often if it is going to save them a few bucks on the price of a seat...
Bang on! The KPI is 98% despatch reliability. Which is a posh way of saying that we can hack 2% of flights being delayed, as long as the other 98% are done in half the time, using half the resources.
The bottom line is that the bean counters only count the beans, but its the management who grow them. As for the front line, there are actually more aircraft flying, more front line jobs and more money to made by doing it this way. The work changes as a result and some people are bound to be unhappy, but that's life isn't it?.