- Double check the gates, they change frequently and announcements are not very clear
When I was waiting for a flight from Bali to Labuan Bajo, to catch a Komodo liveaboard, I sat at the gate for quite a while, by a charging station. While I sat there, another passenger sat down next to me, to charge her phone. When it became almost time to board, I did one last restroom run. While in the restroom, I heard an announcement of gate change. After leaving the restroom, I checked the departures monitor and sure enough, there was a gate change. The woman who had sat down next to me didn't seem to have noticed, so I asked her if she was on the same flight. She answered yes and I told her there was a gate change. She thanked me and I hurried off to the gate.
At the new gate, there was a flight boarding and another crowd of people in no rush at all. I saw that the flight boarding wasn't my flight, so I joined the waiting crowd, but due to an experience I had in Thailand before, I /asked/ about my flight and was told it was boarding and it was almost last call! The single gate was being used for *two* flights! One flight, the one obviously boarding, was using the boarding gangway to a jet plane. My flight turned out to be a prop plane, boarding from the tarmac, which meant walking down some stairs through a door next to the gangway, pointed to by some gate agents.
I never saw the woman who sat next to me board nor get off the plane, so I can only guess that she must have missed the flight, perhaps getting caught up in the waiting crowd in the terminal.
From this experience...
- gate changes can happen at the very last minute
- gates can have multiple flights assigned to it, for the same time or close to the same time, so check with an agent. Don't wait with the crowd!
- the boarding time on the boarding pass is the /last call/ time, not when boarding starts