Moon Dance;
The fuel burn is when you take into the account a delay if you were not to cap is not that bad. What happens to your costs if you have a lot of aircraft that are delayed going around the system and then you have crews going over duty time and then out of position for the next day??? You have to look at the entire picture to understand why you take a little bit of cost in one place to make up for a greater cost elsewhere.
Most airlines will do just about anything to get into the air and try to keep schedule...
regards
Scott