I generally avoid the word "idiotic", but it fits here. Can we flag articles for stupidity?

Article tl;dr -- Airlines used to get from airport to airport faster. Airlines used to be late a lot of the time. Airlines increased their estimated flight times in order to achieve higher on-time percentage. The reason they did this instead of just being faster is that they love using more fuel.

I'm not anywhere near the airline industry myself. The next time I see misreporting on my own company or industry I'll look back at this and remind myself it could be worse.