Why Shouldn’t I Board Before My Boarding Group Is Called?

In this month’s “Dear Eugene,” we explore why boarding order matters and if it’s ever okay to jump the line and board before your group is called.

Inspired by our intrepid founder, Eugene Fodor, Dear Eugene is a monthly series in which we invite readers to ask us their top travel questions. Each month, we’ll tap travel experts to answer your questions with the hopes of demystifying the more complicated parts of travel. Send your questions to [email protected] for a chance to have them answered in a future story.

Dear Eugene, When I fly, I always board before my boarding group is called because I worry about overhead bin space being taken up. I usually never have a problem with this, but on a recent flight, the gate agent was less than happy with my attempts to board early. This got me wondering: Is it really that bad to try to board before your boarding group is called? Why does it even matter? 

In an industry full of thankless jobs, perhaps the most thankless (after tracking down lost luggage) is the gate agent in charge of boarding flights. Boarding is easily the most stressful part of a commercial airline flight—for both passengers and the employees working the flight.

For passengers, it’s mostly owing to the anxiety of finding enough overhead bin space for carry-on bags. For gate staff, it’s a multifaceted hellscape—they must coordinate several different groups to ok the process to begin, handle standby passengers, upgrades, and last-minute seat changes, field customer questions and problems throughout the process, and police boarding zones or groups as passengers board. And they have to get flights out on time, and when they don’t, they have to explain why.

Almost since the earliest days of commercial aviation, getting passengers onboard the aircraft efficiently has always been elusive. At the beginning, when aircraft had at most a few dozen seats, it was simple—call the flight for boarding. But now, when a typical narrowbody jet aircraft holds at least a hundred passengers—sometimes nearer two hundred—it gets a bit more complex.

Why Can’t They Board the Flight by Row Number?

When computer technology was rudimentary, airlines would board by row number, starting from the back of the aircraft and working forward. The idea was that passengers in the back of the aircraft could get settled without blocking those further forward during the process.

It didn’t always work. Passengers didn’t always quite understand row numbers that were “higher” or “lower” than others or which row numbers were at the back or front of the aircraft, particularly if they were novice fliers. To make things even more confusing, airline seat numbering wasn’t standard. In the 1980s, seat assignments at Trans World Airlines (TWA) were entirely numerical, numbering aisles from front to back and seats across from left to right. So, seat 19-1 was a window seat on the left side of a Boeing 747, and seat 25-7 was an aisle seat on the right side of the center section. TWA later switched to the number-and-letter seat assignment numbering, which is common among other airlines.

In the late 1990s, Shuttle by United, the low-cost subsidiary of United Airlines, tried something novel—they assigned passengers numbered groups, starting with passengers in window seats, then middles, then aisle seats. Their thinking was that it wasn’t the passengers in the front of the plane who held up progress; it was those on the aisle boarding before those on the window.

A Method to the Boarding Madness

Today, most airlines board by group or zone number, but the groups sometimes have little to do with where the passenger is seated. American Airlines recently revamped its boarding groups, and those groups are based on frequent flier status and fare type. Delta’s boarding groups are similar.

Some airlines assign groups by seat number, but often, the later-boarding groups are for members without frequent flier status. United still puts window seats and exit row seats in earlier groups, boarding middle and aisle seats later. Alaska Airlines also allocates two later-boarding groups to passengers seated in the back half or front half of the aircraft. JetBlue also allocates group numbers based on seat assignment.

By and large, however, airlines reserve the earliest boarding groups for passengers with elite frequent flier status, premium seats, credit cardholders, or other “higher value” fliers. And that makes it a zero-sum game—if you’ve purchased a premium seat, earned elite status, or signed up for an airline’s credit card in part to enjoy the benefits of boarding early, it’s dilutive if the airline doesn’t prevent other passengers from boarding you. It’s also a real bummer for the overhead bin space to be gone when you’re one of those “higher value” fliers, and those folks aren’t shy about letting the airline know their feelings whenever it happens.

Does Boarding Before Your Boarding Group Matter?

We informally queried a couple of frequent fliers and found that the majority—a little over two-thirds—stuck to their assigned boarding groups. Of the handful of fliers that we spoke with who didn’t board with their groups, we also found the majority of them did so sporadically and not on every flight.

Christina, a freelance theatre director from New York, says her travel anxiety drives her to board early—but strategically.

“If I’m traveling alone,” she says, “I’ll try to jump the line. I have some travel anxiety, and it gets a bit worse during boarding. Crowds of pushy people put me on edge, and I feel better once I’m seated on the airplane.”

She also mentioned a strategy that we found to be a common theme—not necessarily boarding out of order, but queuing up at the end of the group ahead of theirs, knowing that the call for their group is imminent. Christina says she’ll queue up at the end of the line of the group before hers, knowing that sometimes her group will be called while she’s already in line. She notes she’s never been caught or told to step out of line by the agent when she uses this method.

Unsurprisingly, the passengers we talk to who do, on occasion skip their group and board early didn’t want their full name used in publication. Will, a freelance web designer from the East Coast, says he’s tried to board before his group on occasion and sometimes gotten caught.

What he noticed, though, was that they were always pleasant.

“They’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re not boarding yet, and they’d send me back, but it wasn’t a big deal,” says Will. But even he notes that he wouldn’t regularly attempt to skip groups, just occasionally, saying his strategy was more about being the first within his group to board.

Airlines also allow some passengers to board at their leisure, whenever they wish, during the boarding process. That usually includes top-tier frequent fliers, government law enforcement or safety inspectors traveling on official business, or active-duty military travelers. Travelers with disabilities are also permitted to board whenever it best meets their needs. Airlines will offer pre-boarding these passengers, and most take them up on the offer, but airlines can’t require passengers with disabilities to board either before or after everyone else.

The Airlines See You Line Jumping

Each airline also has different procedures for how they handle line-jumpers. American Airlines introduced changes last year that make alerts to gate agents much more apparent when a passenger scans a boarding pass for a later group before their “time.”

In Europe, where many airlines board flights with the aid of automated gates, which require passengers to scan their boarding pass to open a barrier, line jumping is virtually impossible. Those systems are configured to reject passes scanned by groups that haven’t been called yet.

Airlines do toe a fine line when it comes to enforcing boarding order. If a passenger has a reason to board earlier—particularly with a companion in an earlier group, employees are typically empowered to be flexible. Others may make announcements about boarding order with reminders (gentle or sometimes not-so-gentle) that would-be early boarders will be asked to wait until their group is called.

Katie, a marketing executive from California, cites her preference of traveling with carry-ons only as a reason for boarding earlier—but only on full flights where she might have to check her bag if she boards too late. Like Will, she says rather than risk confrontation with the gate agent, she’ll typically prioritize boarding at the beginning of her group.

“If I’m in Group 4 and they’re calling Group 3 and no one else is getting in line, I’m going to be creeping up on that line, so I’m the first one from Group 4 to board,” says Katie. If she’s traveling with someone in a higher group, she says she’ll also give them her bag to stow when they board. “It’s not about getting onboard first. It’s all about having space for my bag.”