After this thread, I was watching the boards at SYD yesterday, pretty closely.
I have to say, with the discrepancies, having a relaxing wait when a flight is delyed is impossible as we don't know whether ti's delayed still or boarding or closed. My SYD-OOL 16.10 yesterday was supposed to board at 1540 gate 38. 1540 came around and passed with nothing showing. I checked the arrivals board and noted gate 38 (frm MEL) hadn't yet landed, so I was fairly comforable it was a delay. This went on until my predetermined time to check with the angels of 1550. At that point the MEL flight in gate 38 had landed (and displayed as such) but OOL had not progressed. Then "go to gate" showed so I decided to wait and see what would happen. About 1555 "boarding" showed. I waited more to listem for the announcement. It didn't come by 1558 or so and I was getting nervous so I quickly asked an angel in the lounge on my way out and she said she'd just check for me. A puzzled look came over her face and she phoned the gate and confirmed yes, it was indeed boarding and as I hurried out, I heard her make the page in the lounge. I'm wondering if that page would have ever come if I had not asked the question.
Seems from that, the lounge is totally reliant on the gate notifying them when they start boarding and the gate didn't do it for my flight yesterday, but the boards were indeed correct. The trouble is, if we don't want to wait at the gate for 20 or more minutes, what do we do? You cannot always just ask the angels because at times the queue is three or four deep probably all trying to ask a similar question............
Also to say that the airport are responsible for the boards is one thing, but the boards updated correctly for my flight, which was late, so it was not updated via a time based pre-programmed schedule, so how did Syd airport know when the plane started boarding? Do the gate staff notify them as well as the lounge (which may answer the question of why some flight are missed........stressed out gate staff juggling more balls than they can cope with).