When most of us get to the airport for a flight, the check-in routine is pretty standard: We visit a kiosk (or one of those old-fashioned things called agents), print our boarding pass, try to tip the scales in our favor so our baggage manages to slip past a few pounds overweight, and move at a glacial pace through a dreaded TSA line with all of the other passengers who haven't yet signed up for TSA PreCheck. Once through security, we might glance at a departures board for gate information on our way to an Auntie Anne's. Yet there's something else we should be doing instead: looking at the arrivals board.
Though it seems counterintuitive to someone who isn't picking anyone up from the airport, taking a moment to stop at the arrivals board can actually be helpful: By doing so, you can locate the status of the incoming flight to your gate, which will in turn affect your departure time—or at the very least, your departure gate. Not all flight trackers offer up-to-the-minute reports, and given that alerts and apps from airlines can be slow to refresh, an arrivals board may be your best bet. If you see that the inbound aircraft is delayed, you'll also be quicker (and better equipped) to plan your next move, whether it be talking to a gate agent about a new gate assignment and an anticipated departure time, or getting an earlier flight on a codeshare partner. And yes, you'll probably still have time for that pretzel.