American Airlines tests a new process to enforce boarding groups

Travelers have spent many years proving the honor system doesn’t make for an orderly airplane boarding process, so now American Airlines is testing a way to make sure people actually board with their assigned group.
A Reddit user posted earlier this week that he was flying out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he noticed something different.
“As usual, group 1 was flooded with people but several people ahead of me when trying to scan their boarding pass got an error beep,” the post said. “The gate agent proceeded to tell them ‘sir/mamm you are group 5, please step aside’. Was awesome to see this enforced and looked like it was system driven vs gate agent having to make that call.”
American Airlines confirmed to USA TODAY that it is, in fact, testing a new boarding enforcement system.
“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,” a spokesperson for the airline said in a statement.
The trial has been active in Albuquerque and Tucson, Arizona, for a few weeks. The airline plans to expand to more airports soon, including Washington Reagan National Airport, according to American.
Airlines try to keep boarding as efficient as possible because the more time their planes spend on the ground, the less money they make. However, experts have proven time and again that airplane boarding is still pretty inefficient, despite the airlines’ best efforts.
Despite popular belief, back-to-front boarding is not the most efficient method. Based on computer modeling, the most efficient possible airplane boarding is known as the Steffen Method, which involves six boarding groups separated by seat location. Even its inventor doesn’t think it’s a reasonable way to board a plane in real life, though.
“It’s not necessarily an easy thing to implement. I wasn’t going for whether it was easy or not, the question I was going for was: what’s the fastest,” astrophysicist Jason Steffen, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, previously told USA TODAY. “There are some challenges to implementing my method. Everyone has to line up in a specific order. That’s a solvable problem, but it’s a solvable problem that has a cost.”
The next best option, he said, is random boarding.
But travelers probably wouldn’t like that method either. People do seem to prefer some structure, but they also often want to get on as early as possible to access overhead bins.
Time will tell if American’s new system helps keep boarding more orderly and satisfying for passengers, but the airline’s spokesperson said the company has been pleased with the results so far.
(This story was updated to correct a misspelling/typo.)
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at [email protected].