Originally Posted by gnetwerker

Perhaps this has been covered before, but I'm curious: I have a long layover in SFO, so I'm sitting by the windows in the UC, looking at Gates 76 and 77 A/B/C. Out of sheer boredom, I've been tracking the tail numbers and other info of the planes coming and going, and I've noticed pretty consistently that the arrival and departure information on both the United app and on FlightAware don't match up with observed reality.

I do understand that "departure" doesn't mean take-off -- it means something like "door closed and brake off", but I've seen a consistent pattern of planes showing as "arrived" while waiting on the taxi area 200 yards from the gate for 15-20 minutes, and in one case (UA5585) an "early" departure was listed a full 35 minutes before the flight actually pulled back from the gate.

That, in turn caused UA5437 (Tail #N785SK) to sit on the apron for a good 15 mins after showing "arrived".

So this may be no big deal, but I was curious.