An American Airlines gate agent checks tickets and boarding passes. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg)
Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Just in time for the holiday travel season, American Airlines is expanding its crackdown on what are known as “gate lice”— air travelers who cut the line ahead of their assigned boarding time.
The Fort Worth-based carrier announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out new boarding-pass scanning technology to more than 100 U.S. airports following a successful month-long trial at Albuquerque International Sunport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Tucson International Airport.
The new technology works through gentle shaming. If a queue-jumper attempts to board a flight ahead of their assigned group, the software rejects the boarding pass and sounds an innocuous audible alert. The American gate agent will then instruct the passenger to wait until their assigned boarding group is called and rejoin the line. The agent can override the alert in certain situations—for example, if a passenger is traveling with a companion assigned to an earlier boarding group.
The term “gate lice” — a pejorative coined more than a decade ago by the frequent flyer community on online forums like Flyertalk — has recently gone mainstream, gravitating to Reddit and even snagging its own Wikipedia page. Last year, The Washington Post went so far as to discuss the psychology driving gate lice. (TL;DR Garden-variety competitiveness is a big factor.)
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that people can be annoyingly cutthroat in the race to claim and commandeer overhead bins for carry-on luggage—a phenomenon American Airlines helped instigate when it became the first major carrier to charge for checked bags in 2008. American earned roughly $1.4 billion from baggage fees in 2023, more than any other U.S. airline, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
As is the case with most major airlines, the pecking order of boarding an American flight is determined by a variety of factors, including frequent-flyer status, the cabin fare purchased, and whether the flight was paid for with an airline-branded credit card. In general, a airline’s biggest spenders and most loyal customers board first.
American says it has received positive feedback so far from its most valued passengers. “We’ve heard from our customers that the ability to board with their assigned group is important to them because it’s a benefit associated with their AAdvantage status or fare purchase,” said Julie Rath, senior vice president of airport operations at American, noting that the initial response “has exceeded our expectations.”
With American, Group 1 is reserved for active duty military personnel, business-class passengers (on a two-class international flight), AAdvantage Executive Platinum members (200,000 loyalty points), and holders of the ConciergeKey, an invitation-only elite status program for ultra-loyal customers who spend at least $50,000 a year and fly over 200,000 miles.
Group 2 is for business-class passengers (on a three-class plane), AAdvantage Platinum Pro members (125,000 loyalty points) and passengers with the top-tier Emerald status in the Oneworld alliance of global airlines.
Group 3 includes AAdvantage Platinum members (75,000 points) and passengers with mid-tier OneWorld Sapphire status.
And so on. Ordinary Joes with a basic economy ticket who are not AAdvantage members board last, in Group 9.
American expects the technology will help gate agents enforce an orderly boarding process and curb the crowds of people who congregate near the boarding area. And, make no mistake, this is just the first stage of a more comprehensive rollout: “In the coming months, the airline will further expand the technology to hubs and other airports.”
It remains to be seen whether other airlines adopt similar lice-shaming technology. All the major North American carriers — Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Air Canada — use variations of priority boarding, with premium passengers allowed to board before those who purchase economy seats.
Even Southwest Airlines, which had an open-seating policy for half a century, is shifting to assigned seats after internal research revealed that 80% of Southwest customers, and 86% of potential customers, prefer an assigned seat.
Notably, though, Southwest is holding on to its most beloved perk. The airline is an outlier for letting passengers fly with two free checked bags, while other U.S. carriers charge anywhere from $15 to $40 for the first checked bag and between $40 and $60 for a second bag. The wildly popular free-bag policy may help Southwest avoid a gate lice infestation.