those things due to regulations, you’d be amazed any flight ever gets off the ground.

In addition to the fact that the gate agents are often the last to get info, yet are always hopeful to get a flight out and don’t want to have to deal rebookings, they tend to have old info, and reveal that info incrementally. So they’re often going to give you either no info. Or best-case scenario with the caveat that could change.

New departure tiles are often optimistic as airlines have every incentive to get that bird in the air, so departure times get downgrade incrementally with each new snag. Result you keep throwing good time after bad and losing other options. That said, waiting it out is usually best unless you can get a confirmed flight within the next 90 mins.

To fuel your imagination of worry and fret, here are the issues that can arise, in descending order of likeliness:

First, parts availability. If you’re in SLC on 737-xxx your odds are good. They have a healthy parts inventory there. Otherwise they have to fly one in, or switch birds.

Second, you hope the A&P tech diagnoses correctly and there isn’t an extensive diagnosis tree they have to follow. Sometimes they have to run through a series of items, tests, and checks, to rule out potentialities in sequence, even though they already know what the problem is. A 10 minute repair takes hours as a result.

Third, a a crew timeout. If the above issues take long enough, and the crew has already been on the clock long enough, they time out and the. You have to wait for a new crew.

Fourth, you have to hope the pilot doesn’t have another agenda and decides to reject the aircraft.

Lastly, you if the airline decides your flight is less important (variety of reasons) than another route, and they end up in a position of having to choose between giving a plane, part, or crew, between yours and the other, you could be in the wrong end of it.

There are other considerations like gate times lots but usually not an issue these days.

My advice? If they’re giving you an actual time and a specific answer about the mechanical issue… the odds are decent your flight will go out today at some point, so just stick it out, especially if you checked bags.