Gentlemen, proportion please! No airline likes to cancel flights if it can possibly avoid it, and the crews I have met in my time in the business have always gone to extraordinary lengths to get the passengers from where they are, to where they want to go to, on time. Even in the old days of regular 4 hour delays in the charter market, crews were always trying to get the job done and still do. Now, people will say it is management that are causing the disruption, but I have just been into our Operations Department, where the guys and gals are tearing their hair out trying to reduce disruption. The Ops Controller told me that until he gets an airborne message for a flights departure, he has absolutely no idea how long the turnaround is actually going to take and then he is able to plan where it's going next, as the programme is not easy to maintain in the current situation. Add on to that the problem we are all aware of, that if there is a delay the passengers tend to wander off to the bars, restaurants, duty free, etc and then when the aircraft is ready for boarding we all know the result.
Times is very hard at the moment and I suspect going to get a lot harder, so I feel that people are too busy trying to juggle all the balls in the air, rather than having time to think up subtle schemes such as have been described. I have time to answer this as I should have been off to Seattle today to pick up a new aircraft, but due to the disruption my flight has also been cancelled!!!! My thoughts to all the families of the missing.