I don't want to put words in Contacttower's mouth, HD, but surely if you remove contingency time (opposite of engineers'
'take a number and double it') you are already into a compromise rather like the red wire?/blue wire? conundrum of a bomb disposal expert in the last few seconds against the timer.
I know some of you ATC types like to compare your skills to those of competition chess players against the clock, and that officianado chess players call time trouble
zeitnot.
A quick look at the alternative methodologies described at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitnot might make for uncomfortable reading ... I think ERG may already have been there in developing their yardsticks for NATS
