How the hell does this happen? Not one of them thought it was weird they were waiting?

[BornSlippie]

38 passengers stood in a stairwell for 40 minutes at Manchester airport this morning. The plane left without them and their baggage was not removed which is a massive safety breach!

Don’t worry though they got a £10 voucher each 🤣 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/the-planes-gone-passengers-left-33257487?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRleAPbir5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeAqOm9yuYVQTfweKxPdgDKwGxdwgjiarz8_vB55gJqJk8HncFATD-xsXorQc_aem_iBTnS8LxhFBb9b_keY9AeA#Echobox=1768825840 if its behinds pay wall (it shouldn’t be) I have another article

I would imagine that most of them thought it was odd, what could they have done?

Turn round and ask someone ?

It’s not that simple though, is it?
Doors at airports are often coded so you don’t have free access to all areas to go back and forth. I don’t think 40 minutes is a particularly remarkable wait at an airport so, as much as I’d be irritated, it wouldn’t enter my head that the plane had fucked off without us. And if you did clamber passed everyone and manage to get back to the boarding gate, there’s every chance the queue would have started moving in that time.

The last plane I was on was a Jet2 and we literally queued on a set of stairs heading downwards for about 25 minutes...then a barrier was lifted and we were called through to get on the bus.

I can absolutely understand why a large group of passengers would listen to directions and wait patiently where they were told to queue. And queuing in a stairwell really isn't that unusual at all!

I don’t think 40 minutes is particularly remarkable. Yes, you might have been wondering what was happening but who are you going to ask? The people stood in front or immediately behind you, who are similarly in the dark.

Its the norm in Manchester Airport to be queuing down staircases when boarding a plane. Probably the door they passed through closed and they were then stuck.

I find it incredible that nobody seemed to be that concerned that 30-odd passengers who had all had their passports scanned at the boarding checks just didn't appear on the plane.

Last summer when I flew they called all the passengers with children to the gate first. We all piled into one of these staircases where we were left for what seemed like forever. Most people gave up and sat down on the floor. When the doors finally opened and the bus arrived to take us to the plane, they never let us off. They kept us standing on the shuttle bus for about half an hour and then drove us back to the terminal and back into the staircase we all went. They also allowed us to take buggies right up to the tarmac before going in the hold rather than leaving them at the gate. You can imagine the commotion of everyone having to help each other carry them up and down multiple flights of stairs full of babies and toddlers plus hand luggage. This was also with Jet2 so I can easily see how it happened.

Yep massive basic head count fail.

Would love to read the incident report 🙃

If you fly budget regularly, you get used to being held on staircases for ages, though I’ll admit, I’ve never had to wait for 40 minutes.

We did all get called back when we were walking across the air bridge once because it was the wrong plane 😱

Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday…

all joking aside, as ex cabin crew you absolutely do a head count. If passengers checked in doesn’t match the amount on board then you go back and check the manifest. This is why you hear “last call” messages for people in airports, because otherwise the ground crew have to start the painstaking and delaying act of deplaning their luggage from the hold. This is a shit show, it doesn’t matter if they took a wrong turn down some stairs or not.

We were once waiting over an hour like that with Ryanair. I am a proactive person but there were no staff anywhere

Oh yeah, Ryanair staff are industry leaders in disappearing when there’s a problem.

I flew out of Manchester one day when they obviously had some kind of flutter about security. We were waiting ages by the plane - not the same situation, but not that dissimilar - and at some point a bloke stepped out of the queue and was obviously going to go and try to find someone to question about what was going on - they yelled at him! There were two members of staff literally racing across to stop him moving.

I can absolutely see why no one fancied trying to shove at a closed door there, or even going for a wander to find someone. Much more likely you'd stand and wait patiently.

No doubt there will be an internal investigation into how the plane came to take off with so many passengers missing and with their luggage still on the plane because it is very hard to understand how that could happen and bad that it did. I’ve certainly been on at least one flight where luggage has been removed because a passenger has not appeared as have probably most people who have flown reasonably often.

If they’ve gone through the ticket check at the gate then I don’t think there is another official check, they only look at your ticket when you board to send you to the right seat. Obviously that needs to change!
We were stood in a passenger tunnel thing for ages coming back from Lanzarote last year. There was no air of “this is a long wait” or “I hope they don’t go without us”

Waiting to board is a completely standard part of flying and 40 mins isn't even particularly long. "Turn around and ask" - ask what? "Excuse me, is the plane definitely waiting for us or is it going to take off and leave us behind?"

It was a massive fuckup by the airport and Jet2, the passengers aren't at fault.

That's a mad security risk

I've definitely waited that long in a stairwell with Ryanair, on more than one occasion, and wouldn't imagine something had gone wrong.

Having 38 empty seats v their passenger manifest might have been a clue!

Sounds like they have not bothered to do the standard checks. Serious security implications.

Not only shockingly bad security failures, but I'm horrified to hear passengers are routinely kept waiting on stairwells. If there was a fire, that's it, they're dead.

Fair enough I’m being unreasonable! I apologise. I think the main issue is that all their baggage was left on the plane!

I just can’t get my head around 38 people not sitting in the seats, all of whom would have checked in, and the crew not thinking something was amiss and not investigating 🤦‍♀️. Or, why OP’s first thought was to blame the ‘silly passengers’ and not the crew?

All their luggage was in the plane yet they were not in their seats. I’ve had a few flights where we were delayed as someone who checked in, had luggage put in plane, didn’t make it onto plane and plane was delayed while they searched for that particular luggage and took it off before we could take off. So, 38 people’s luggage (or thereabouts) and none of them in their seats plane is ????

You would hope that experienced cabin crew could visually notice 40 extra empty seats.

I think easyjet are the expert at that. I had a flight can elled at last min and easyjet staff ran and hid ( faro airport). It was the pilot who came out apologized and told people what they needed to do

People are counted once boarding is complete. Have you never seen the crew walking along with a clicker?