I have never really used this site before, which is supposed to be "up to date" on airport travel conditions. So why has it said all day that MCI is green-lighted, but on the official MCI site it has clearly shown all day that numerous inbounds and outbounds are cancelled because of ice conditions?

Could it be that the delays at MCI are caused by weather in other locations (e.g.ORD, MDW and/or PHL)? IOW, flights are able to arrive/leave MCI just fine, but the conditions in Chicago are delaying all in and out of ORD by around 4 hours (and therefore impacting MCI).

That's part of it.

But flights to MCI today have been cancelled from all over -- California, Texas, New Orleans, Denver, etc etc etc.

And I have it on good intelligence that the ice storm in KC is wreaking havoc.

So I wonder what good faa.gov is . . . .

Keep in mind that the site only has information about FAA-related delays (weather reducing arrival rate at airport, high traffic volume or weather reroutes causing delays enroute, disabled aircraft blocking runway, airport closed to arrivals/departures, etc.). Carriers may delay or cancel their flights for lots of reasons that won't show up on www.fly.faa.gov (crew scheduling, aircraft scheduling, gate scheduling, ...).

So it's a good "lower bound" on the delay, but you may experience much longer delays due to your airline.

The faa.gov map is only for airport-wide actions ordered by the FAA at that airport. It's really useful for flying to congested areas, larger hubs, and airports notorious for weather delays (i.e. ORD, EWR/JFK/LGA, SFO, etc.). You might try checking out the Airport Arrival Demand Chart in addition to the status map. Mouse over "Products" from the menu bar above the map and highling the AADC selection. Then click on MCI and you'll see a graph of a sixteen-hour arrivals window. Near the top it indicates how many cancellations there have been in that 16-hour window, which is usually 1 hour into the past and 15 going forward. What this graph reflects are scheduled arrivals at the airport.

Right now, this graph indicates 14 cancellations as of 2145z, or 1545 MCI time. A quick check of the flykci website shows exactly 14 cancellations in the 16-hour window of the graph (about 1445 to 0645 Thurs.)

I use this tool to get a better feel for cancellations at my local airport (IND) and also for indications of when the flight banks might cause congestion at big hubs like ORD and EWR and thus delay my travels.

As for the delays at MCI, it looks like the delays since about 0600 this morning have been heavily a NW issue, as they have cancelled 9 flights arriving from their hubs plus MKE. US cancelled 5 of their little prop flights from places like Hays, Salina, Great Bend and Little Rock, plus one jet from PHL; those little props are usually the first to cancel in any kind of weather due to their ratings for landing in adverse conditions (pilots and experts - correct me if I'm wrong on that, but I do know they cancel those little birds a lot). Aside from that, there were 3 CO hub flights cancelled, UA had 5 - two ORD (not surprising considering the ground stops and other delays there), two DEN, and one IAD. DL had one DFW hub flight cancelled, and AA cancelled an ORD and an LGA. WN also cancelled an OAK arrival. Seems to me that most of the cancels are not surprising given the weather at big hubs in the midwest, and don't really reflect reduced MCI ops.