On being late
There is a pernicious reason for the problem you describe.
I don't know about other airlines, but at least Lufthansa *used* to operate a scheme by which for a ridiculous sum (thousands of DM a year, it might even have been tens of thousands) you could join a club, very exclusive, which mean you would never miss a LH flight.
The boss of a company I represented used to enjoy keeping me at meetings until the last minute, with the queue to join the autobahn to the airport visibly (out of his window) growing by the minute. Finally he would finish the meeting and let me out. I always caught the plane, regardless of how long it took me to get to their airport. Sometimes I was an hour late for the (two hour) flight.
He just did it to show his power, and put me under pressure; a legitimate business tactic.
He used to have the meetings in the evening, before the last flight. The town is noted for its trade fairs, which meant that normally hotel rooms were not to be had for love nor money. If you didn't catch that flight, you'd be sleeping on a chair at the airport.
However, it wasn't just me that he did this with; after a while my colleagues all had it sussed, and were no longer as pressurised. Not much satisfaction for the other pax who sat and fumed and missed connections from this northern German airport so this guy could put pressure on his overseas representatives.
I hope that schemes like this have now been stopped. Doubtless a few fat-cats thought it the ultimate way to show their superiority over the plebs ("my business meeting is more important than your missed connection"), but surely the missed slots and general grief in the air must have been prejudicial to air safety. Surely also the wasted fuel alone must have cost Lufthansa more than the proceeds from the sale of these special-privilege cards.
So I guess they were doing it to win the goodwill of key decision-makers. E.g., their shareholders. And people controlling organisations with huge travel budgets, which then got spent on LH rather than their competitors. Whatever the reason, I hope this practice is no more.