Rant: the airport gate change that made me stop trusting flight apps

Last month at O'Hare I sat at gate B12 for an hour watching the board say on time. App said B12 too. Then they swapped us to C21 with a 9 minute walk and I almost missed my connection to Des Moines. How do you guys handle gate changes when you're stuck in a terminal with no nearby screens? I started checking the airline website instead of the app, but that's not always faster either.

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david_adams2d ago

...and that's exactly what happened to my buddy Steve last spring, except his app kept telling him everything was fine until he was literally boarding the wrong plane. He was at DFW, parked at gate A22 with his phone showing the same gate, and then he looked up and the board above his head had already flipped to a different city. He had to sprint across two terminals with his carry-on banging into people, and the plane door closed like two minutes after he got there. The gate agent actually told him that the app updates slower than the screens because the airlines push the changes to the airports first. So now he just watches the physical boards every few minutes, even if his phone says otherwise, and he treats the app like a suggestion, not the truth.