Yesterday, Laurent wrote about Technology, sweet and sour how he had to pay for WiFi service to notify me about his plane being late. In a sense, it is not in the best interest of airports to let your flight depart on time - the more time you spend on an airport, the more money you spend. For Schiphol Airport, the main source of profit used to be their shopping centre. I don't know what happened after tax-free disappeared, but I guess not much has changed.
The dutch national railways (NS) have developed this system into a fine art. While punctuality of their trains has dropped to unacceptable levels (that was the main reason I bought a mobile phone, and after that a car several years ago...), they have at the same time turned around many of the medium and larger railway stations into shopping malls, with most of the restaurants and snack-places operated by the NS.
If the train doesn't go on time, you are more likely to buy coffee or a snack, so the NS make more money on you. So, as a traveler you might be inclined to think that the goal of a railway or airline system is to bring you from A to B as quickly as possible, there might be multiple incentives for the operators, leading to other conclusions...