Estimated departure AHEAD of schedule!

This was a first for me — an airline departure that was not delayed, but was estimated to depart 10 minutes ahead of schedule.

Our return from Manilla was via Nagoya, Japan and Detroit.  After disembarking in Nagoya, I checked the monitor and found our flight NW 072 (code share with Continental CO6357) scheduled to depart at 12:45 and estimated to depart at 12:35.

And we weren't the only ones.  CS 970 to Guam and NW 78 to Narita were also listed ahead of schedule.

Did we?  Well they appeared to have the doors closed at least 5 minutes ahead of schedule.