Sitting on the taxiway with one engine shutdown and the other at ground idle is a lot cheaper per minute than any airborn flight schedule.
I couldn't agree more, Gus, and the point I was trying to make was that it's the lack of ground infrastructure in many cases that is causing your and many other airlines to waste money burning fuel unnecessarily.
Direct routings, as I've said before are often offered by ATCs, but there's not much point if it just gets you into the hold 2 minutes earlier and you then spend an extra 2 minutes holding, or it gets you on the ground 2 minutes earlier and you then wait for 2 minutes for your stand to become available.
I appreciate you would prefer the ground holding option to the airborne option, as I'm sure most ATCs would, apart from the Ground Movement Controllers, of course.
As traffic starts to get back to pre-banking crisis levels it will be airport infrastructures and not ATC that will be the cause of most of your delays, so enjoy your direct routings whilst they last.