The argument that BAA makes is reasonably compelling. When there is not much left in terms of capacity, what can you do when your ops are disrupted, other than cancel and divert? Some airlines diverted (i.e. EI), others just cancelled flights (BA).
Granted, BA could've told people why flights were cancelled, but then again, the customer advisors are probably so far down the chain that all they get is "due to technical problems" instead of "due to weather causing cancellations".
I've seen this in the past, except it was the other way round... the higher the report went, the shorter and more vague it got, until the CEO got a two line summary of what went on, and was nowhere NEAR what really happened. I would not be surprised if that's not been the case here.
S.