India, June 27 -- Have you ever seen a cluster of passengers hovering around the boarding area, inching toward the gate before preboarding has even started? Perhaps you've even been one of those travelers, anxious to get on the flight, ready to stand in line as soon as your boarding group is called. For carry-on-only travelers fighting for bin space, the time around boarding can feel tense and competitive, causing them to crowd even more.

There's actually a term for these travelers who tend to crowd gates-and it's not very pleasant. "Gate lice are those [who] stand up in the gate area, take up space, [and] crowd the area before boarding," says Kolin Jones, a certified pilot and the founder and CEO of Amalfi Jets. He says the term was c...