Say a flight is delayed 1.5 hours. Would you leave the lounge early and sit at the gate? I've seen cases where a flight is undelayed so I guess you should but if there's a more optimal "relaxed" way then that would be ideal.

What's the general protocol with being "un"-delayed?

It would depend. If the flight is delayed due to an inbound late a/c no reason to go to the gate although I would monitor the app because on occasion there may be an a/c swap (at a hub) and the original flight time restored or moved up. Also, the club would likely make an announcement to that effect. If it's weather/ATC/maintenance delay that's a different story, particularly if it's a rolling delay and/or the club is a long walk from the gate.

So kick back and turn on a flyertalk alert? It takes 15 minutes to go from a lounge to gate a lot of times. I assume they give some buffer on any sudden flight change back forward in time?

I'd ask the lounge agent to check with the gate from time to time. I'd not necessarily rely on the screens.

I concur. I learned the hard way by relying on the boards...flight was un-delayed unbeknownst to me.

And, for the same reason, I'd never take the risk of giving myself an extra minutes/hours to get to the airport even if the app is stating that minutes/hours delay. Learned this the hard way also...while the flight was delayed, the check-in closure time was not.

I made the mistake of prematurely making the trek down to gate D3 in DFW last week in a rolling delay situation. In hindsight, I wish I had figured out a way to defer the gate area experience (miserable place) as long as possible. The thing is, it takes 10+ minutes to get to the low numbered gates from the nice parts of the terminal, and the plan was to board the plane as quickly as humanly possible after the crew showed up. Still, I'll try to be a little smarter next time I find myself in a similar situation.

This is the worst. I actually had a recent Alaska flight where nothing was being properly updated and the gate agent said it was fine to go to the lounge for about 30-45 minutes. About 15 mins later, i received a boarding announcement on the app (boards still hadn't been updated) and ran to the gate. It was an E175 and they were boarding the rest of the passengers (I had a seat in F). I asked the GA why the quick change and she had no response. Of course, bins were full and I had to stow my bag halfway back in the plane and then wait until everyone deplaned to get it.

I�ve had delayed flights quickly change to immediate boarding, so I don�t push it, but it is a decision made under the individual circumstances, including the reason for the delay and how close the lounge is to the gate. I don�t entirely trust the boards, and there is some peace of mind in being at the gate and seeing and hearing what is going on.

I got the original boarding time notification from the airlines app, so I went to the gate and lo and behold there was no boarding going on.

are lounge staff actually able to help in some way or is it dependent on the lounge? For example I recall in London, the lounge would call out passengers by name with updates but at the club at ATL, I never see anything like that

IME, some lounge agents are often pretty good at pulling off flight changes, but when the gate agent has no idea what's going on with your delay, you can bet that the lounge staff doesn't either.

Was it any specific club, or "The Club" (which is a non-airline-operated lounge). I've heard specific flight delay and boarding announcements (where there typically are none) in airline-operated lounges, but don't recall hearing much in the annoucement department in the 3rd party lounges.

As another point, sometimes an airline won't staff the check-in counter until X hours before the delayed departure time, and if you need to check luggage, you'll be sitting with it for some time. This occurs at out-stations, such as when it last happened to me @ EZE on DL. I knew of the delay in advance (and had already changed my connection to avoid a misconnect) but already had arranged for my airport transportation and sat at EZE for some time prior to check-in.

At airports where I can, I'll go first to the general lounge (Centurion, PP, etc.) and then move to the airline's own designated lounge (closest to my departure gate if there are multiple ones) as flight time approaches. It's better to be in the airline's lounge to catch announcements and also to be rebooked if needed.

As the lounge's closing time approaches, some agents have been observed to tell people to go to the gate when nothing is happening in order to push the customers out of the lounge more quickly.

Yes The Club (3rd party)

As for your second point, that sounds contradictory to another user's experience of needing to arrive for the normal check-in time such that they couldn't enter later despite the delay.

Every airline and every station is subject to be different. One or two flights a day type stations where the counters are staffed X hours prior to departure (and you can see your enroute inbound plane is 2 hours late) is a lot different than, say DL at ATL or UA at SFO, where someone is always there, and you're subject to having an aircraft or crew swap at any time.

So in such an instance you'd want to check-in at the original time because there's no guarantee, and you'd want to show up at the gate at the original boarding time for the same reason?