You can read my full timings in my long post on the disruption thread about that evening. I’d forgotten I was updating things in real-time as well for some of the announcements etc on board.

The times in the databases are definitely wrong. Gate departure seems to be recorded too early as 2359 — I don’t remember boarding until at least more than 3h05 had passed from scheduled departure which was 2055 because I remarked to my spouse when the 3 hour mark passed and we were still in Greenwich lounge that unless they miraculously made up time, BA would definitely owe us EC/UK261 comp. That means gate departure definitely was later than 0000.

I fact I have proof: I have two time stamped photos I took from the Greenwich lounge of a BA plane with a tug next to it time stamped 0015 and 0024 EST.

Then I have a time stamped 0028 EST screenshot of a Flighty notification from “3 mins ago” which noted “Gate departure at 1159pm” which cannot possibly have been true.

The projected takeoff time on Flighty of 0223 is reasonable (but of course we never did take off) and the projected landing time on Flighty of 1332 with gate arrival at 1337 is reasonable too (but we never arrived in LHR).

Even stranger is the fact that when we were finally rebooked on AY just before 6am EST on Dec 20th, I noticed the following on the AY app. I can only assume that when they included the BA172 leg they are somehow showing the flight which (perhaps?) the plane actually took to take the crew back to London immediately. It can’t be our flight since we were offloaded after 0245: I have a time stamped photo of our child sitting watching the seat back video screen from 0247.