In theory thats a great plan.......... more power to ya...

You are right ...dont screw the pax....it doesnt take but one overly anxious gate agent to strand a bunch of pax....... as happened with a DAL agent the other night in ATL. She was very vocal that this was her last flight to work for the night.... told us she had a full boat... then recanted about 10 prior and said they were all accounted for ..... while we are finishing the paper work the NINE passengers where were "running" appeared in the concourse window...givinging us the "whats up look"..... so we TOLD the gate agent....her response ......."they should have run faster".......called ops ... they said to tell the agent to call them.... bottom line is if we had just taken the gate agent at their word.... well you get the point. And yes, I know this is NOT the norm.......but it is an example of what can happen.

personally Im for the 5 minutes or less crowd. Its just my opinion but 10 is a bit much. I commute and did years ago when I was in this business, and if the AA 727's out of JFK to RDU and routinely left 10 minutes early I would have missed my morning commute home dozens of times. Hell most of our block times are sooo generous its difficult to over block anyway.

FWIW.... its a damn good plan.