until you miss an important connection ...

you would then change your mind.

Such as your connection is the last or the second last flights for the day...

Or your connection is to Australia, Asia, even Europe

Or your connection is the daily flight to ANC...

Then your vacation will be ruined for a good part as

1) you would have to stay overnight at the airport

2) you may not be able to be put on the next flight out if there is no seats, then you will have to spend another day at the airport

It does not take much time to plan whatsoever if you take a simple precaution - look at your connection flight and see what is available should you miss the connection - I normally would check if there are 1 to 2 flights after mine, and if there is an alternative way to get to my destination should my own airline cannot put me on its own flights...

One example would be, on our trip to Alaska for a SB cruise, if our flight could not take off as scheduled due to weather (only daily flight from DFW to ANC on AA), we would be in SERIOUS trouble - even if we could be put on the next day's flight, we would miss our ship - the next stop to catch our ship would be 4 DAYS later after the ship set a sail for a 7-day SB to Vancouver... How about this potential?

You dont want any possibility of such to materialize.

I changed our flights to one day earlier when AA showed availability. So we wound up arriving ANC 2 days before boarding the ship. I would rather be safe than sorry.