Is Timatic always up to date?

Is Timatic always up to date?

YES, to the point where travellers should not worry about it. IATA tries really, really, really hard to keep Timatic current.

Here's a fun video describing some way they do this: Timatic Sourcing

Basically, they try to maintain close relationships with the agencies responsible for entry and transit requirements and encourage them to notify IATA before any change takes place.

Or, can Timatic afford to be out of date at any point in time?

NO. No one in the industry benefits in any way from Timatic being out of date. In fact, it's a huge liability for the airlines.

To be clear, try as they do, some random bureaucrat can forget to notify IATA and cause problems. There are also some wonky situations, such as the US Passport/Turkish visa thing.

info can be misleading/incomplete/unclear?

Here's the deal with this, it doesn't matter. Timatic can be flat out wrong but there is no way to convince an airline on the spot that is the case. You can be traveling with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson himself, but if Timatic says you need a visa and don't have one, you're not going anywhere.

Yes. The new Hungarian COVID rules were put in place in such a hurry (the new rules came into effect <12 hours after the decision) that TIMATIC was out of date for a few hours, between midnight and 4:30am or so. Good thing noone was flying within Europe to Hungary during those hours...

TIMATIC / IATA information is NOT always correct. I am certain of this because Italy published new passenger restrictions related to Covid-19 on July 1, 2020. The change included 8 new exceptions to the restrictions such as family members of EU citizens and foreign students. Yet, TIMATIC never updated their information and that caused airlines to block passengers who had a right to travel and who had bought tickets based official information.

Quite a poor job by TIMATIC because the updated restrictions were widely available for weeks from embassies and foreign and health minister sources. Even worse, they ignore data errors that are reported directly to their office.