Basically you can’t unless you know someone in dispatch....the dispatchers are the conduit for all of the information. You can get the odd bits like when we were stuck in Charleroi with heavy snow in Dublin and one of the pax had a mate sitting on the outbound aircraft waiting for de ice..
It helped and contrary to what I expected on the second day the airport staff at Charleroi kept the airport open until half an hour after official closing so that we wouldn’t have a second night in the local hotel. Ryanair were fantastic and we didn’t have to run the gauntlet again of two woman with large skirts robbing some of the passengers whilst we were waiting for room allocation.
There are times when the crew are some of the last to be informed and I learnt a long time ago that whatever I did as a passenger was going to have the square root of eff all effect so sit back, order another drink and fantasise about the crumpet.
PS we went over duty on a ZRH to BOM as someone decided that they wouldn’t allocate loading staff; so we sat at the gate with connecting passengers who hadn’t had anything to eat for seven hours telling them a lot of rubbish which is what we were being fed. Eventually I told dispatch we would need another co pilot unless we went as we were going over legal duty time out of home base. So they gave us an ETD which they failed to meet again. Conscious that pax take priority we illegally operated. Never heard anything back but it wasn’t the only time.
Had it before in my first outfit.