More flights are on time because airlines are padding schedules

After decades of suffering through countless delayed flights, airline passengers are facing a new twist: Record numbers of airplanes are arriving early.

But that’s not as good as it sounds.

One in five domestic flights on major airlines got to the arrival gate 15 minutes or more ahead of schedule in 2012, a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Department of Transportation records shows. That’s the highest early-arrival rate since the DOT began tracking arrival times in 1987, according to the analysis of tens of millions of DOT flight records.