There are so many factors that go into answering your question. Above all: What route are you flying? An airline can be the most communicative in the world, but if they only offer one flight a day on a particular route, or if they fly smaller planes on the route, you may be SOL regardless of how communicative and responsive they are.

Candidly, I think your expectation that the airline cancel or delay flights before you head to the airport is unrealistic. How are you traveling to the airport? How early do you typically head to the airport? Are you really saying that you'd prefer to have an airline cancel your flight, say, 8 hours before you're scheduled to fly than cancel it 2 hours prior (even if that means they're cancelling flights for weather that could have departed if they'd waited longer to make the go/no-go decision)?

I'm not sure I completely understand your concerns about communication. Airlines notify passengers ASAP when a flight is canceled. You can set up any number of notifications -- with both the airline and third-party vendors -- that can contact you via phone, text and email in the event your flight is canceled, delayed and/or changes gates. Many circumstances can cause a flight to be delayed and often the airline cannot provide a minute-by-minute estimate of how long you'll be delayed. They're not deliberately choosing to withhold/not communicate that information. They just don't know.

Take, for example, a flight crew that is arriving on a connecting flight and on the verge of "going illegal," which could cause the flight to be delayed (while the airline finds a new crew) or canceled. Umpteen factors can influence whether that crew makes it to their connecting flight in time. On approach, does the ATC tell the pilot to adjust his/her airspeed and runway based on ground traffic or changes in wind direction? Does the control tower tell the arriving flight to take the most direct route from the runway to the gate or a more circular route across the tarmac? Is the gate still occupied by another flight? Is there aircraft traffic that causes the arriving flight to stop short of the gate? Is the ground crew in place to move the jetway to the plane? Do offloading passengers disembark quickly or slowly due to a large number of passengers who need wheelchair assistance? Are there any mechanical issues that need to be documented before the crew can walk to their next gate? Are the gates close to one another or far apart? How crowded is the terminal and how long does it take the crew to walk from one gate to another? Etc., etc., etc.