Scenarios do not start late.
Scenarios start at 3 pm Eastern. That is Show-Up Time, when people need to show up in the arena if they want to play that frame. A side then gets time to arrange and brief its pilots, and takeoffs are scheduled for 3:30 pm.
If a side is having problems getting people arranged and briefed, which happens occasionally but infrequently, we might delay takeoffs a few minutes. For example, the largest delay in Pantelleria was frame 1, wherein the axis had a major problem to deal with and needed more time to get organized. People were still in the air at 3:36 pm, an insignificant delay.
The history of why we do it this way is as follows.
Before 2007, scenarios advertised takeoff time, and rule writeups generally stipulated "please show up at least 30 minutes before takeoff." A significant number of people ignored that and showed up near takeoff time. It resulted in chaos -- sides getting close to takeoff not knowing if they were disastrously undermanned or if a bunch of people were still going to show up, not knowing if they needed to make hurried emergency changes to plans or GL assignments, people showing up right near takeoff derailing last-moment briefing by asking where they should go, what plane they should take, where they take off from, what the orders were, some people showing up after takeoffs, etc.
So, in 2007, we solved it. We switched to advertising the Show-Up Time for scenarios -- the time when people need to show up if they want to play, which would be sufficiently in advance of takeoff to accomplish what was needed.
It solved the problem nicely, and we've been doing it this way for more than a decade now.
