American Airlines is trying the embarrassment route to remind people they need to wait their turn when boarding flights.
The repeated announcements and reminders to line up for flights only when you’re told to do so don’t work for everyone, so American Airlines came up with a new way to have what many airline employees not-so-nicely refer to as “gate lice,” or the people who gather early, hovering around the boarding area, trying to board a flight before their assigned time.
Now when someone with a Group 9 boarding position tries to get on with the Group 1 passengers, they hear what the company called an “audible signal” and an alert for the gate agent that someone has jumped the line, The Washington Post reported. The agent then tells the line-skipping passenger they’re not in the correct group.
“We are in the early phase of testing new technology used during the boarding process. The new technology is designed to ensure customers receive the benefits of priority boarding with ease and helps improve the boarding experience by providing greater visibility into boarding progress for our team,” the company said in a statement.
Gate agents will still be allowed to make some adjustments as they see fit, for example allowing families in different boarding groups to board together, CBS News reported.
The new process rolled out in Albuquerque and Tucson and was expanded to Washington D.C.’s Reagan National Airport, USA Today reported.
Travel experts said the problem of people jumping the line has gotten worse recently, attributed to trying to secure the coveted, but limited, overhead bin space since checked bag fees continue to increase.
There are also influencers and social media posts that tell people how to skip the line and board earlier, The New York Times reported.
“You’ve got a lot more line cutters today than you used to because there’s now a benefit from boarding early that there didn’t used to be,” travel app founder Scott Keyes, said.
Gate agents have typically not enforced the boarding hierarchy, to possibly avoid delays, but technology may now be the bridge to ensuring that people board when they should instead of placing the responsibility of pointing it out on the employees, the Times reported.
“What I’m hoping is that this message gets out to the public and that those boarding lanes are not being clogged,” The Points Guy managing editor, Clint Henderson, told the newspaper. “Frankly, a lot of people that are in that line know they are not supposed to be boarding early, and they know they can get away with it.”
“I see this new procedure as a good thing. It will help expedite the boarding process and keep people honest,” former flight attendant Jacqueline Whitmore told Fox News.
To see American Airlines’ boarding process, click here.