I've had good luck just calling the EXP line and asking as casually as possible, "now where's that inbound from again?" I make it a point not to ask the flight number - twice I have been told it is against security procedures to tell what the fight number is. As usual, it always depends on the agent and how helpful they want to be. Last month I had a delay in ORD (what a surprise!) and was able to get an agent on the phone that gave me the status of my plane 2 flights previous to my outbound flight. Sometimes it takes a couple of calls to put together all of the information but it is worth it. In the case of that ORD flight I found out that the flight before the flight before (don't know how to say it other than that) was 45 minutes behind. Cacluating for a 25 minute turn I realized that by the time my flight rolled around I was going to be very, very late. What kills me is that they know everything is running behind and all the poor folks sitting at the gate look at the monitor and it's saying "on time".