Is it not a little worrying that the travelling public are so gullible that they would even believe it was true when told "the crew wanted more sleep" or somesuch??
It's probably a fair bet that most of them actually have jobs so they have the money to actually buy the ticket ...... so do they often turn up late for work because they "wanted more sleep" .....
As has been said ..... pax should be kept informed and truthfully.... that also means if it's an indefinate delay making sure that's what folks are told.
If the departue is based on estimates or firmer times based on an actual movements then that surely should be made clear.
Of course being in a position to provide that depth of detail means having staff in position to talk to the pax.
If it's a handling agent then the airline needs to porperly manage them.
Sadly it seems the drive to reduce costs mean that this is often no longer the case for either option.
I've often seen handling agents leaving pax with the impression that a "next info ..." is actually an ETD ...... even when it simply means that's the next time the previous station will update them.
In my view if it's the airline's own gate agents etc then it should be able to properly control the information flow and accuracy and shouldn't tolerate gate agents being sloppy with information.
But I really do struggle to see how any intelligent person working in passenger services would not only know that such an explanation was plain daft but would also know exactly what effect it would have if passed on "verbatim" to the pax.....