Pilot folks explain this to me. Last Wednesday night in a 2 hour period, 24 of the 48 domestic aircraft were over 25 minutes early for their PTL's when they departed. Surely if the PTL system is ever going to have a hope of working then the pilots need to collectively help by departing at the correct time. As an ATC we could penalise one or two offenders each hour to enforce the times, but how are we ever supposed to penalise half of the inbound aircraft?
As an ATC I'm getting pretty sick of copping lip from pilots when they receive a delay only to point out to them that they departed an hour early for their PTL. Changes their tone pretty quickly.