Ok, I don't so much think its an issue of the exact reason for the delay but a matter of communication and respect. My last trip, a week ago, the aircraft went tech. The crew handled it very well. It started as a "well folks lets see if we can handle it from up front its going to be 10 minutes" then to "well folks it looks like we have to get back to the gate and have our tech guys have a look at one of our misc ports, another 10-15 minutes" to finally "well gee folks, we're real sorry about this but we are unable to repair this aircraft, the gate crew will do everything possible to get you where you need to go". We got off, the gate crew gave us options announcing them over the loud speaker, we made our choice and had a new flight on a competitor airline to a nearby airport within 20 minutes. Were there unhappy people there?, you bet but we all knew the airline did a good job at making it as painless as possible by giving time and basic details at each step. We knew it wasnt the coffee maker or a missing bag of nuts. The information was relayed as it was known with a time estimate and appology. Good job Alaska Airlines by the way from pilots, on board crew to gate crew.