Supposedly UAL taught its crews that it should mention prior to parking that they're early.
I really see that when you come into ATL 1 hour early and you won't get into the gate for 55 minutes so to a passenger we're 55 minutes late - unless you repeat we're way early, all gates occupied, for the sake of your luggage it's best when we don't swap gates, we're in the gate 5 minutes early.
I had an old man getting off a plane unload his frustrations on me for being late. We seriously, no lie, 15 minutes early and we never stopped moving from landing to the gate. It just took 20 minutes to deplane but I don't think he was talking about that, to him, we were late and he needed to have it out with the pilot.
