I fly to a lot of smaller airports through ORD. People don't understand that "weather" means more than rain/snow at the origin or destination of a flight so when the GA says a flight is cancelled for weather they think it is due to no one on the flight to BFE.

In my experience though most of those flights are more full than flights on larger planes. My flight to CID on Sunday was oversold by 10.

I think the rumor that flights get cancelled due to light loads goes hand in hand with the same plane going back and forth to the same airports all day. Many people on my SYR-ORD flights thought the plane would turn around and go right back to SYR. Infrequent flyers need to justify things in a way that makes sense to them. "weather is fine here so it's not weather", "I see plenty of pilots so it's not crew" "it must be low #s on the flight...i only see 30 people in the boarding area"