单选题 Everyone knows that arriving late is the scourge of air travel. But many passengers have started to complain about something they find almost as irritating: arriving early. Or landing early, to be more precise.
If a flight is not held up by air traffic congestion, weather or some mechanical difficulty, it may well touch down at its destination hetbre it is scheduled to arrive. But showing up early often means waiting for gate space at the terminal, which is becoming increasingly scarce. As the minutes tick by, expectant passengers are left to gape through the portholes at the Promised Land, just beyond reach.
"Once you arrive, the last thing you want is another delay," said Michael Gaiss, who estimates that he has flown more than 100,000 miles this year. "I would say it happens 20% to 25% of the time. " The deficiencies of government data gathering make it hard to be precise.
But top airline executives acknowledge they are aware of passengers' annoyance over early arrivals. And officials said it is part of a broader problem with congestion at the nation's busiest airports—including a competition for gates that can leave travellers stranded on planes whether they land early, late or on time.
Paradoxically, the problems stem in large measure from the airlines' efforts to improve their on- time records. As congestion has increased in recent years, the major airlines have padded their schedules to more accurately reflect the longer gate-to-gate travel time caused by air traffic problems of all sorts.
For example, a flight from Kennedy International Airport to Seattle took 22 minutes and 48 seconds longer last year than a decade earlier, even though the time in the air has not changed.
Airlines and the government do not track the waiting times of flights that arrive early. However, it is clear that waiting to roll the final distance to the gate is taking longer, no matter when a flight arrives.
The inspector-general found that waits lasting an hour or more, from the time a plane lands to the time it pulis up to a gate, increased by 35% from 1995 to 1999.
On Dec. 15, four of American Eagle's commuter flights sat for 90 minutes to two hours before the passengers were taken off on buses. On Nov. 27, travelers on a Delta Air Lines flight that arrived two hours late from Birmingham, Alabama, waited three and half hours to disembark—almost tripling the length of their scheduled three hour flight.

单选题 According to the first 3 paragraphs, arriving early means ______.

单选题 The flight from Kennedy International Airport to Seattle now takes longer because of ______.

单选题 The problem of early arrival seems to be caused by ______.

单选题 Passengers on the Nov. 27 Delta Air Lines flight took ______ to complete their travel.

单选题 Which of the following is true according to the passage?