American Airlines is testing new technology at various airports to discourage ‘skip boarding,’ queue jumping by alerting gate agents when passengers attempt to board before their designated group.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) addressed the issue of skip boarding, at last week’s online media briefing where passengers intentionally queue out of order to board a flight early.
Nick Careen from IATA mentioned that staff sometimes allow these passengers to board rather than turning them away, creating chaos during the boarding process.
Mr Careen told the online briefing: Boarding—you could talk the rest of the afternoon about that. Anyone that travels knows the queuing process, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s front to back or side to side or ceiling to floor, or Wilma, which is one that’s most often referred to of late. The fact remains that no matter what the process is, it’s still a bit of a mess in front of the check-in counters when we start to board. Some of that’s human nature, and a lot of it’s just a desire to get on the aircraft. We even created a new term called “skip boarding,” where customers are trying to get past the queues in order to get on the plane first. It is definitely an area that is a continuous observation from our airlines but certainly dissatisfactory for our customers. We believe that biometrics and the advanced use of biometrics will actually help with that in terms of saving time.
It’s just a word or term used. I think there might be some others as well, but it’s simply when you see people who are in the wrong line and they do it on purpose. By the time you get to the gate, the agent finds it easier just to take you than to turn you away. So, the airlines and the travel industry decided to put a term on it, which essentially describes what it is—skipping the boarding.
