Once there’s a quantifiable cost that cannot be escaped, airlines will be forced to solve the problem.
Incidentally, I find flying in the EU to be far more pleasant than in the USA. Perhaps it is related.
A route that regularly has multi hour delays on the tarmac due to congestion at terminal should not exist.
If the service is being offered it better be capable of being rendered.
The issue is that all these airlines are running things with much lower tolerance for variance in the system than they used to. They just don't have the resources to support that any more. Rather than lose money by being honest about what they can handle, they'll let passengers suffer. The reason is obvious: no matter how awful my experience so far, I'll continue to keep flying.
I suspect air travel will get worse until the limit case that it's so awful people start refusing to fly altogether.
Of course they don’t have control over the weather but they do control how they react to it.