Every Airport worth its salt has monitors featuring the CNN Airport Network. A nice way to catch up with the world when your waiting for a flight. Well my idea goes like this, a monitor with some sort of nationwide radar weather coverage, colored in to show rain of course. This way when the airline claims that the flight is being delayed because of weather, visual proof will be available to all the passengers. May not end the wait, but it will make more understandable and believable. Plus now airlines won't be able to fake a claim of weather to avoid comping their passengers. Whaddya think.

Anything that would help the passenger be more informed might help.
I think it is sign of the times that lying has become a way of life. When I was a child, lying was worse than stealing! Now, it seems like many people tell falsehoods to divert blame, or to gain personally. I spent the last 31 years of my professional life as a college professor. If there is any profession that should hold everybody closely accountable to the truth, it is someone whose whole professional reputation rides on being accurate.
But college profs are no different. There was one faculty member in my department who lied any time he felt pressured or if someone rebelled against his tyrannical measures. All feared to confront him because he would really make life miserable for all around him.
(Tenure does have its drawbacks!)
But I doubt if anything will stop present business practices of deceit.
It would be too costly to bring the matter to arbitration or a court if an airline said a storm stopped the plane even though the radar said there was no rain of that magnitude. I a company wants a spokesman to lie, someone will do it. Afterall, we have not seen a very good example recently at the national leadership level!! We have national high officials who lie everytime they said they didn't!

I've always wondered about how CNN Airport News would handle a major airline crash. It would certainly be the top story of the day, but would they report it?

And Michael, I like your idea, but unless there is advertising involved, it'll never fly. That's the only reason CNN is on.

Hmm, how about the Weather Channel Airport Network in that case? Anything to make it more diificult for the airline to fib about weather.

Imagine this scenario:

Supervisor: "well tell them it's weather realated that will solve the problem."

Gate Agent: "Dude, I can't sell that the weather channel is showing clear skies everywhere. These people will throw me into the engine of a regional jet."

Supervisor: "WHAT, YOU MEAN WE'LL ACTUALLY HAVE TO COMPENSATE THESE PEOPLE!?!? That's just great, there's goes my bonus for being the biggest penny pincher around."

BTW, it's called the Airport Network, but they use the HeadlineNews feed, so I think they would show it.

Take a good book. See the list of great reads on the Europe travel lounge site. You are being lied to A LOT! The best avenue is to relax and use the time you have. In my last great 12 hour long wait, I noticed some savvy travelers used their laptops/ palms etc. to book
alternate flights, train, bus connections. Impressed me! My suggestion was for all of us to rent a bus to Atlantic City and wait there for the next night's flight to Chicago which was
largely empty. It would have been more fun. Did have about 10 takers until they cancelled the whole flight, which left us in a 2 hour re-embursement line.

You know if the airlines would just come right out and tell passengers why a flight was delayed, I think people would be more understanding. If it is weather say so, same with mechanical, late crew etc. Why lie? They also should be more honest about departure time, if they do not know an exact departure time why not say so instead of saying an hour. I do not think passengers need to see it on a tv monitor. As for the CNN Airport Network, I find it extremely repetitive and annoying. We were stuck in O'Hare the day Janet Reno and her merry men grabbed Elian from the Miami relatives. CNN Airport kept repeating, repeating and repeating the story. It drove me nuts!

Well if someone would ever take my suggestion and open up a by the hour pool table room, nobody would be worrying about delays.

I agree--I hate the CNN Airport Network! Once I was stuck overnight at La Guardia, which shuts down from 10pm-6am or so (too residential for nighttime flights); I was trying to get some rest, and even though the place was shut down, the monitors with CNN played loudly until they went off automatically at 2am, only to come back on automatically at 5am.

Re the weather, it will be interesting to see if things actually improve since the FAA recently decided that a unified nat'l weather monitoring system will be used by everyone involved. Previously, all the airlines and airport control towers used their own sources, so everyone was in contant disagreement.