Originally Posted by
mambotaxi
An additional approach I’d take in these sort of instances is to check if the inbound flight had arrived and was at the airport on FlightRadar24 or similar.
Obviously this isn’t fool-proof as there may sometimes be last-minute operational changes to use a different aircraft but it at least gives a little more context to the picture.
You might even be able to work out which gate you need from the aircraft’s map location. Then triangulate this info with whatever else you can glean from lounge or gate staff.
I'm afraid at Heathrow this may well cause you more issues than it solves in terms of triangulation. Whereas you can rather more readily rely on this in the US, where say AA or UA's apps may well tell you where your incoming aircraft is arriving from (indeed, where its been the whole day), BA does not provide this functionality.
For my lack of gate showing situation yesterday, the aircraft had come in from JER. BA swaps aircraft in and out to meet operational need at hubs all the time.