Originally Posted by
gnetwerker
... 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".
If you haven't already, check them again now. I've had a few occasions where a flight I've been on waiting for to get to a gate at SFO showed as arrived and a time roughly when we pulled up short of the gate just like you're describing. But then after we actually did get to the gate the time updated to that time.
So yes, the information was wrong for a while, but in the end it's updated to the correct information.
However that's from a very small sample size (twice that I can recall) so I can't really say it's a pattern...