Many air travelers who are not entitled to early boarding still try to secure it by coming to the gate before their zone numbers are called.
Early boarding is usually reserved as a perk to passengers in higher fare classes, to frequent flyers, and to those passengers who have small children or mobility challenges.
As gate agents are often in a rush to get passengers on board, they will not always have the time or energy to argue with individual line jumpers and sometimes just let the interloping passengers through.
In an effort to crack down on this behavior, American Airlines has turned to technology.
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American Air tech stops line skippers at boarding gate
Last month, the Fort Worth, Texas, airline (AAL) said it had invested in software that either opens the gate door or keeps it closed and lets out a beep based on the boarding pass that a traveler scans.
Passengers who try to scan their passes before their gate numbers are called will be physically prevented from entering the boarding bridge.
This year the technology has been tested at some American Airlines gates at Tucson (Ariz.) International Airport, Albuquerque (N.M.) International Airport, and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Now, American Air says it's pleased with the outcome of the pilot program and will be rolling out the technology to more than 100 airports nationwide. Many airports will see this change come into effect around the Thanksgiving holiday.
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American Air: Flyers like boarding-gate tech
“The initial positive response from customers and team members has exceeded our expectations," American’s senior vice president of airport operations, Julie Rath, said in a statement.
American is positioning the change as a way to support customers and make the boarding process more orderly.
The airline also said that passengers who are eligible for early boarding have made clear to the airline that a crackdown on line jumpers “is important to them.”
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The airports that will see the change come into effect most immediately in the coming weeks include Austin-Bergstrom International and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. The company will also use data it collects during the holiday season to inform the expansion of the tech.
Social-media response to AAL tech mixed
While the responses to the change among American Airlines travelers on social media varied, most flyers agreed that it would create a fairer boarding process amid the spike in passengers using questionable means to board flights early.
The biggest complaint was that it treats travelers like lawbreakers before they did something wrong.
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"I saw it recently while I was getting on a flight from Montevideo, Uruguay, to São Paulo," USA Today’s travel columnist, Christopher Elliott, wrote recently.
"A man with a cane cut to the front of the line, exclaiming, 'I have a cane!' [...while] I wondered why he hadn't preboarded with the other passengers with disabilities.”
“Everyone wants this except the people who abuse it,” someone with the username r/msears101 wrote in an aviation forum on the social-media platform Reddit.
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