Man you ask a lot of questions!
Nope, never (knock on wood) ended up on a divert to/from work except when I ended up in LAS when PHX shut down and the crew timed out, but that's just 'up the street' and I got an inexpensive hotel and whooped it up until I jumpseated home, same crew, same flight number, but the next morning. Why dispatchers use TUS as an alternate when the WX in PHX is bad is hilarious. America West would pretty much send 50% of their fleet there and gas gets skoshe real fast.
On the missed commute, my Delta flight cancelled, I went over to USAirways which would get me to NYC about an hour before my show time, that flight had significant delays, I told scheduling that I'd be landing in the USAirways terminal at my check-in time and I'd call them when I landed. I called my captain and told him the situation and the inbound flight number. NO problem. Get to JFK, jetway breaks, another 45 minutes on the jet and I'm in the back of the aircraft and terminals away. On landing, I told CS what the situation was, I called the captain and he said just to show up whenever I could, he'd take care of the rest of it and we launched. Only pushed back about 3 minutes late I think.
Never heard a peep about it because again, if you're going to commute, you're going to have to put your big boy pants on and make sacrifices because the world doesn't revolve around your need to live in one place, but work out of another.
I just blocked trips together and planned in advance. I only commuted PHX to JFK once a month, maybe twice, tops and pre-117 I'd just go two back-to-back six day Europe trips, stay in NYC in between trips and fly home when it was over. Easiest commute, internationally, ever.
Domestic NYC? Forget it. and I was 60% in the category with a solid line. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.
If it were pure JFK, no problem, but LGA and EWR? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… I'd rather walk 50 miles through knee-deep fresh diarrhea with bare feet then watch cable news blasted at 90db than to ever do that again. I lasted a month and I said "fuggebowdit".