Whe I flew US years ago, they were famous (at least with me) for fabricating stories. One time in PHL we were told that there was a flight delay due to a problem with "one of the lavatories". I walked around the bend of the terminal and could see the aircraft from a window a few hundred feet away; there were two US maintenance types with a wing flap under repair! Strange place for a "lavatory" repair...

Another time, we were being delayed from PHL to MHT due to a mechanical. Delays keep rolling up hour by hour; finally I start thinking about BOS as an alternative, as flights to BOS were hourly and this was the last flight to MHT of the day. I headed over to the BOS gate and just as I got to the counter the BOS flight shows "cancelled" for equipment problems. The gate agent sees my ticket, winks at me and says "just wait here". I'm confused but I wait. She directs the BOS passengers over to a customer service desk. Once they're all gone, she changes the gate sign to MHT, with my flight number, and asks me to please be quiet about what I just saw.

I understood exactly what they were doing, and it made perfect sense (get the passengers to MHT as the BOS passengers could catch a later hourly flight), but it was lying, pure and simple.