Curiously, I've had the exact same problem when I was in Britain. At Heathrow Airport. They would not announce which gate flights leave from until ~20 minutes b

Curiously, I've had the exact same problem when I was in Britain. At Heathrow Airport. They would not announce which gate flights leave from until ~20 minutes before boarding. Considering there's no 'crush risk' in this scenario, what even is the point of it? In the end I just used any of the myriad of online sites that list flight data to know which gate I needed to head to 1.5 hours before everyone else, and got to enjoy some peace and quiet.