I will add . . . Make sure you have the airline's app on your phone. You'll get gate notifications by text, sometimes even before the gate change is announced.

And go to what you believe to be your gate 30 minutes ahead, just to check. And keep an eye on the monitors.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, if you have any issues with your flights and need to be rerouted or placed onto a new flight, don't bother standing in the (long) lines at customer service at the airport. Call the airline directly, explain what happened, and tell them to book you on an alternative. That's much, much more efficient than waiting in line.

Same thing for booking a hotel, unless the airline will cover it.

Yup. On our recent flight home from NZ, we took off two hours late. They announced that 208 passengers were going to miss their connections in San Francisco, including us.

Mr. Sphinx used the on-board wifi to do a chat with a United Agent. It took almost an hour, but we got rebooked onto another non-stop flight. We wouldn't have even made that connection had we stood in the line or waiting until we landed to deal with it.