@daimbarsatemydogsbone
BTW if load sheet was wrong that's a firing offence for ground staff - for very obvious reasons.
It is, but there is zero evidence so far at least any load sheet was wrong so what point are you making?
As for:
“ That's either a lie or the pilot should be fired.
Every flight has a load sheet with details of Pax and bags/freight.
The only way he didn't know is if the sheet was wrong.”
Start making allegations like that and sorry but you are going to force me to produce a TL;DR (again).
I know other companies might do things differently but BA and many other airlines others used a centralized load control system that works something like this:
The loadsheet (provisional) will have been presented to the crew maybe 20 minutes before departure… at T5 the process starts with the staff at the gate and on the ramp, then run through a formal check in the back offices by CAA licensed personnel and then gets transmitted by landline back to a gate area printer for presentation to the flight crew.
The crew will be looking at that sheet to ensure the significant important figures - zero fuel weight, fuel, take-off weight, payload and trim are credible and sensible. In the context of this debate the payload is the important one….that is to a first approximation the sum of the weights of passengers, baggage and cargo.
Somewhere down the page, near the bottom, there might will be a summary of weights in various loading positions in the hold but when I worked it was never a requirement to examine hold loading in fine detail, you just needed to see you had credible number in the payload field near the top of the page.
Also when I worked we used to carry a lot of Mail/cargo as freight so even if you’d had the time and inclination to the bother of checking weights in individual holds it would tell you nothing about the number of suitcases…that tonne (ten tonnes on some aircraft) might be bags, it might be pharma, it might be auto industry spare parts, etc etc…you really don’t know, you know you’ve got some weight in the holds
Fast forward through the rest of the departure process to start up and taxi-out -
Before take-off you’d get confirmation (final figures) of the weights/load, but again all you are seeing is confirmation/verification of important weights…do they tie in with what you were told at briefing, what was on the provisional sheet….your not checking number of bags.
So…cut to the chase…If the provisional loadsheet was based on zero passenger bags on board the crew could quite legitimately not be aware (especially if there was freight/post in the holds). If the final figures are based on the same premise the crew are still non the wiser and no rules have been broken.
All that doesn’t alter the fact that what has gone on is v poor customer service to say the least, but I’d be really careful about assuming crew, loading personnel or loading/balance supervisors should be fired..