Your flight is leaving in three hours

I recently booked airline travel for the first time through a well known online travel provider. Interesting feature - they call you three hours before each flight to let you know if it's still on track. I'm wondering how much benefit there is to this - most airlines don't move a departure time until much closer, but I suppose it would be helpful if a flight has completely canceled. Of course, the 5am call to remind me of my flight later that day seemed like poor programming on their part. What do you think - useful feature?

>> So far, one vote in favor of the programmer from Jeremy.