Are Gate Lice Soon to Be Exterminated?
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Travel Debates is a series in which our editors weigh in on the most contentious issues that arise in-transit, like whether you should ever switch seats on a plane or if you should check your work email while on vacation.
Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that American Airlines was in the midst of testing a new system targeting passengers who attempt to board the airplane ahead of their allotted group or zone. The editors here at Condé Nast Traveler largely rejoiced. Few components of travel these days are as reliably lawless as the boarding process, where passengers feel compelled to stand, en masse, around the gate desk the moment boarding begins, regardless of whether or not it's their turn. Airline employees have long referred to them as “gate lice.” The assignment of boarding zones, meant to quell the crowd, has heretofore been unsuccessful due to a lack of enforcement on the part of the airlines. You cannot operate on the honor system within a system that lacks honor.
But what does utopia look like? Is it as simple as a quick and easy boarding process where everyone stays in their lane? Can we ignore the extenuating circumstances that drive those in later boarding groups, who refuse to pay a premium for “early” boarding, to gather so impatiently in the wings? Why are travelers so anxious to get on the plane? Below, staffers Matt Ortile, Hannah Towey, Meaghan Kenny, and Jamie Spain join me to discuss.
Charlie Hobbs: Before we get into technologies being used to control the boarding process, I want to get your gut reactions to the current state of boarding, and in particular to this term “gate lice” that refers to people crowding the boarding gate before it’s their time. What do you feel when you see this?
Meaghan Kenny: My first thought when you asked us to debate gate lice was, “What do I think of somebody boarding a flight knowing they have lice?”
[Laughter]
Now that I know what that term means, I would put them in the same category as people who, as soon as you land, jump up to grab their bags and try to get ahead of everybody. It creates chaos, people can’t see or hear what’s going on. It’s not like there’s open seating on the plane, just relax, you’ll get to your seat.
CH: Even Southwest has done away with its open seating.
Jamie Spain: I find the gathering and crowding to be a problem when it obstructs people whose turn it actually is to board, which slows everyone down—why are you doing this?
Hannah Towey: Here’s why, I think: you desperately want your carry-on bag to have the overhead bin space. It’s another situation where the airlines are pitting us against each other when it’s really their fault, because why should passengers have to fight for overhead bin space? There should be enough for everyone—it should be guaranteed.
When I don’t have a carry-on bag, I’ll just sit during boarding til everyone’s on the plane. It doesn’t matter. But I have lost a bag before and so I do understand the stakes of wanting to be first in your group so you don’t have to check your bag at the gate. You pay for everything else, you pay to check your bag, so you shouldn’t have to also pay by way of priority boarding just to make sure your carry-on can make it on the plane.
[Murmurs of agreement]
CH: Not to defend the airlines, and they probably have some hand in this as well, but the inefficiency of boarding is also an airport scale problem, though. This past weekend, coming back from Montreal, I landed at LaGuardia and disembarked but once we got into the airport proper, there was no getting through. The gates on either side of mine had flights boarding, and the two crowds were so chaotic that there was no room for the people getting off my flight to even move through the airport.
HT: Airport design definitely contributes to the chaos. I was just at Heathrow, and they had this weird situation where there was nowhere to sit outside the gate. Instead, they unlocked the door to a separate boarding area down the hallway fifteen minutes before boarding. But that was also annoying because I had a few hours to burn and hundreds of travelers were packed into this one communal area instead of waiting by their respective gates. It made it harder to get work done.
MK: Back to the problem of gate lice: Do you guys find a certain type of person—older, younger—more likely to crowd the gate?
CH: The bigger the group traveling together, the pushier they are because they want to stick together. Last year, I was at the airport to go to Rome and get on my first cruise for work. My boarding zone got called and this nuclear family that was clearly doing a big trip together closed ranks. They all grabbed each other and were advancing on the check-in desk like a tank, and the daughters were literally saying, “Encroach! Encroach! You can’t be afraid to encroach, this is what we have to do.” They pushed me out of the way. And then we all ended up sitting in the same row together and I felt this ill will for these strangers that I was stuck with for nine hours. It sticks with me the, “This is what we have to do,” because it’s a self-perpetuating myth. You doing it creates the problem in the first place.
Matt Ortile: People’s overarching relationship with the airport is to want to spend as little time there as possible, because that’s all time spent waiting. But it's like when you're driving, and the car next to you speeds up to pass you but then you both get stuck next to each other at the same stoplight.
CH: So, in a move that surprised me because I can’t believe it didn’t already exist, American Airlines is testing a system that flags when people attempt to board before their group has been called. Reports the Post, “When when someone tries to board with the wrong group, its software gives an ‘audible signal’ and shows the gate agent a message with the correct group.”
MO: Shame! Shame!
CH: Probably the only social tool that works. Have any of you jumped groups before?
JS: Yes, and I’ve been caught, I swear this is not a new thing. It’s when I’m traveling with someone in a different group. And there is a sound that goes off, but the flight attendant will just be like, “Whatever!” I can’t remember the name of the airline, it’s been so many different ones.
HT: I’ve boarded before my group by accident and gotten away with it.
MK: Me too.
CH: Which is understandable, by the way, because in the chaos of the gate lice it’s hard to see or hear who is boarding. I did it once, because I was anxious about my carry-on but also just to see if I could.
HT: I think the tech is a pretty good idea, anything that can be used to actually streamline a system is the point of technology.
MO: I worry there will be travelers who, because they are the way they are, will try to board too early and hear the beep and say, “What’s the big deal? You want me to go back in line?”
HT: My closing thoughts about the gate lice are that we should all protest the airlines pitting us against each other by boarding in order and sitting down nicely until your group is called. Unity!
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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