<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mymiles2go:
It means that the crew may have gone into a situation where they were either A) About to fly more than they were getting paid for or B) Were about to fly more than federal law allows.</font>
Were the first one actually ever a reason to cancel, this would be a very different world. There certainly would be a lot of people who wouldn't have gone to NY this morning.
It's almost impossible to go illegal after pushback. Based on some changes in recent years, it is actually technically possible, but only under a very defined set of circumstances. But that doesn't explain why they pushed back and just sat there. Or are you saying that they pushed back and then just waited to go illegal? If so, that's quite an allegation, and I'd personally want a lot more than a gate agent's word before I made it.
IMHO, there's a lot more to this story than anyone on this group knows.