Flight status "cheating" with Delta Connection (Comair) in Cincinatti?

Hi,

We got stuck in Cincinatti this week, after our Delta flight from
Vegas was delayed -- we had only 4 minutes to make it from the shuttle
to the gate where a Comair flight to Montreal was waiting, in the C
concourse. Anyway, when we arrived, the flight status said "Closed" --
I haven't flown in a while, and last time I did, that meant you can't
board!

We gave up and went to a free gate agent to ask for vouchers for a
hotel, since this was 11:55 pm. He first asked us if the flight was
"actually" closed, which I didn't understand... He went over and asked
someone else, and came back saying the flight was indeed closed.

The next morning, while waiting for our rescheduled flight, we saw at
least THREE Comair flights before ours that were all delayed at least
10 or 15 minutes. All of them showed "Now boarding" on the screens at
the time when they were due to board, but no gate agents were calling
for them to be boarded. Travellers who got up to board were sent away
each time. Finally the screen passed to "closed", and THEN they
announced the flights were boarding -- the gate screens were never
changed back to "now boarding".

In one case, people were boarding a flight and the gate said the
flight was "departed"!!!

Ok, I realize that there's probably some software that automatically
advances the state of a gate, based on the time. But when I complained
about the confusion, the head gate agent said there was nothing they
could do about it. Concourse C in Cincinatti seems like a design train
wreck as far as airports go.

My question is, does Comair get credit for flights departing "on time"
when they actually were late because of this? Was this "cheating"?

By the way, the explanation for the Comair delays was a software
design fault, provoked by the large number of reschedules caused by
the snowstorm:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/30/comair_bad_box/