Been there and done that.

As for UA and information, I honestly don't think UA's trying to snow the passengers.

I was caught out in that huge storm that rumbled through ORD late Sunday morning. I was on the noon LGA-ORD flight and they started boarding at 11:30. About 11:35 they noted that ORD had just instituted a two-hour ground hold. The Captain noted he has seen the weather radar at Flight Ops before boarding the plane and said it looked evil. It was decided that due to staffing issues in LGA, they would unload the plane (which was nice they did it five minutes in, so most were not even on yet).

At 12:00, they said it would be 90 minutes, at least, before we could depart, based on the weather.

At 12:10, they reported the weather at ORD had suddenly lifted and operations were re-starting.

At 12:15 they noted we looked good and should begin boarding shortly.

At 12:30 they started boarding us.

At 1:00 with the loading complete, the Captain noted UA was still trying to synch their schedules (and I would imagine scores of flights were affected, if not over a hundred - then add all the other ORD traffic) and expected us to be sitting on the ground for about an hour. He did not want to offload us because things change moment by moment and if we're ready to go, we get to go.

Sure enough, at 1:15 I hear over Channel 9 we have push-back clearance.

We're wheels-up around 1:30 for a two-hour flight time.

About 1:45 we hear that the huge storm that wasted the midwest is now moving East and all traffic is being kicked-up north of the Great Lakes so that will add about an hour to our flight time. We do the "grand tour" including Niagara, every Great Lake, northern MI, WI, and then down towards ORD.

As we touch down, I hear from Ground our gate (B19) is not ready so we're going to the Penalty Box. Two minutes later, UA Ground Ops gets us an open gate in C (C11) and we can proceed direct to gate.

Ah ORD in the Summer...