Skipness, there may be some merit to what you say, particularly regards using judgement, however, in today's game, I'm afraid it's all about 'On Time Performance' with regards handling agents (which is superior to that of BA's btw) and very little else as every 1min delay is followed by finger pointing/apportioning blame/penalty clauses/writing reports etc, so unfortunately customer service usually takes second place either intentionally or not.