I’m looking on the Heathrow Airport website, and it has my daughter’s flight to NY listed as “gate open.” Is there a difference between “gate open” and “boarding?”
Not from what I can tell. Gate open just means that the crew has arrived at the gate and can answer question, etc. Boarding, is still boarding.
Yes- ‘gate open’ just means you can go and wait by the right gate, rather than buying overpriced nasty coffee just for something to do, ‘boarding’ means people are actually being allowed on to the plane.
I believe “gate open” also indicates that the gate has been finalised, so you can head over in that direction without worrying about ending up at the wrong gate. The gate will be open before (sometimes well before) actual boarding.
You contradicted yourself a bit there. There is a difference. As you say, “gate open” means the passengers can go to the gate, but they won’t be allowed on until it says “boarding”. IIRC at Heathrow there are waiting lounges at the gates, maybe one lounge for each two or three gates.
I thought this was going to be a WC question.
I’m unsure what the contradiction was. You just said the same thing as me? 
The problem is that, in response to the OP’s “Is there a difference between ‘gate open’ and ‘boarding?’”, you said “Not from what I can tell”, implying that you were under the impression there is “Not” a difference. But there is a difference!
:smack:
Don’t know what I was thinking actually.
Carry on.
Heathrow (and perhaps other airports in Great Britain?) has a terminal layout considerably different from typical American airports. Could this be the source of the confusion?
My experience at Heathrow is that one must wait in the huge common area that resembles a shopping mall until the gate is announced as “open” for a particular flight.* Once this occurs passengers on that flight are permitted to leave the common area and proceed through corridors with Death-Star ambiance to a separate waiting area right outside the physical gate. They wait there until the flight begins to actually board.
Contrast this to typical American airport, where one can generally plop down in a chair gate-side immediately upon clearing security, no matter how early you’ve arrived. The concept of a gate “opening” in the sense that it does at Heathrow really doesn’t apply.
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- It’s only at this time that you’ll even find out what gate it is. Not that it matters, because you couldn’t go there until now anyway.
Thank you all. My daughter made it to New York, and today is walking around mid-town and Times Square.
I think it’s just something that happens at busy airports. They don’t necessarily know which gate it will be, so you have to mill around in the general air-side area.