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’m not sure our takeaway from this should be that the passengers weren’t proactive enough

happened to us at another airport.
first 2 busses were not as tightly packed for so reason, so the last buscdidn't have space for all passengers.
about 20 people or so were left stranded in the stairwell. waited for about half an hour before we knew what happened and then couldn't go back because someone with authority had to authorise the door to open to let us back into the terminal.

we got some compensation but I don't remember how much. def more than a tenner.

Clearly not, otherwise I wouldn’t have made my comment. I was incorrect and you have explained why - in quite a patronising manner.

In the age of budget travel, waiting in a stairwell without any communication is standard practice. After an hour or two you might start to question it but 45mins is nothing. It’s called cattle class for a reason.

It’s really time passengers who normally use Manchester started to vote with their feet… it’s one of the worst airport experiences in the world! The airlines do usually end up making it an easy choice though, with hardly any decent routes west and always overpriced compared to Heathrow on the eastern routes, and charters it’s much easier and faster to go through Liverpool or Birmingham. I’d never choose it first ….

Yeah I can’t see what the passengers could have done. They don’t let you back up the stairs, there are never any staff in that part and waiting is just part of the delightful experience of flying nowadays. I’d be annoyed but not surprised at standing there for ages - and even if it had been over an hour or more there really isn’t anything you can do as there are doors on either end. I presume they unlock in a fire hopefully!

The door ticket check is part ot the Head count

If you watch the gate staff they will hand off a list and one of the cabin crew will go down the plane checking the numbers.

They should already know and have checked that everybody on the plane had a ticket to be there.

The head count checks that the same number who went through the gate ended up on the plane and if not they would have to deplane and find out who is missing.

^ basic check to stop you loading am bomb etc into the hold and not boarding. (Or someone needing a toilet and heading off into the staff only areas to find one)

This, plus if you're stuck in a stairwell and can't go forward or back, you really just have to stand there and wait because if anyone starts to try and move you risk others trying to do the same and then you've the very real possibility of a crush or people falling down the stairs. Terrifying.

Hopefully all the passengers were put on the next plane (although that would be likely difficult as almost all Jet2 planes are virtually full and it would be pointless travelling if people were only going for a weekend break) but if it was me I'd be applying for my denied boarding compensation due to airline fuck up.

I also avoid Manchester if I can get what I want from Leeds, which is closer or Liverpool which isn't that much further than Manchester and much quicker to travel through.

Yes I love the way the OP blames the passengers for not doing anything about it!!!

To slightly misquote Oscar Wilde:
"To lose one passenger Jet2 is a misfortune, to lose 38 looks like carelessness!" (Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest)

And this is totally on Jet2. How does the crew not notice 38 discrepancies on the manifest?!

I am sure someone will have to explain that at their disclipinary.

I would guess it falls within gross missconduct?

How is it patronizing to ask if you'd seen it?

Not sure about the airline involved here but not all airlines do headcounts or boarding pass checks at the door and passenger lists (if you even get one) can be slightly adrift.

OTOH you'd expect someone in the cabin to notice a shortfall, but if the vacant seats were scattered around the cabin and the crew were busy maybe not.

I can see how this happened. I’ve waited in stairwells for quite a long time on many occasions. You go where directed and tbh waiting around is part of modern air travel. I’m not sure how the crew didn’t notice though. 35 people is quite a big number.

Yep..

Sounds like they might have gone through the jetty head process (boarding pass scanned, so logged as in effect boarded), but then got misdirected.

I can see how the crew might have missed it, see my previous post.

It's a bit early to blame them or start calling for disciplinaries (which some here seem to be) without knowing Jet2's system.

I've not seen this at all in the last three or four years, on around a dozen flights on different airlines.

Boarding cards are scanned at the boarding gate, and in many airports, people then walk down the stairs and wait to be allowed on to the plane. What seems to have happened here is that the boarding staff and the cabin staff have lost track of the 38 passengers. As far as the boarding staff are concerned, everyone has passed their desk and been scanned, but they haven't realised that these people are still on the stairwell. As far as the cabin crew are concerned, everyone has passed the boarding desk and they seem to have assumed that everyone is therefore on board without actually noticing that a large number of passengers are not there. The pilots have similarly not noticed that the aircraft load weighs around 3,200kg less than they had expected.

@Havanananana

Nicely summarised....

No, the doors locks will automatically release and they can evacuate

It's entirely normal at the Manchester airport hell-hole to be corralled into stairwells to wait to board your plane, usually with no staff within the stairwell. We've certainly been "held" in stairwells there for 20-30-40 minutes waiting for the exit doors to open to board a bus or walk to the plane steps.

I suppose people who are more accustomed to more "humane" comfortable airports in the UK would regard it as strange/odd, but it really is the norm at Manchester.

Yep, we tended to go via Liverpool or Leeds wherever possible. Manchester is always last resort when we have no other options. We used Blackpool for a few years when Jet 2 did a few daily flights from there which was very handy and a brilliant airport experience as it was so small and everything ran smoothly, but sadly they closed it. Very soul destroying using Manchester again after a few years of using Blackpool. It seems to get worse every year.

Queues in the stairwells are the norm at Stansted and Luton. Last time I flew from Glasgow we queued for 15 minutes in the pissing rain at the foot of the aircraft stairs, which was even worse than queuing in the stairwell.

There are a few airports, not just MAN, where the ground staff have a habit of pre-boarding passengers onto stairwells or jetties....

The suspicious might think it has something to do with the handling agents trying to ensure they get an on time departure........

They had "checked in" at the boarding gate, their boarding passes had been scanned. The stairwells are effectively the secure "corridor" between the gate and the plane.

Plane crew don't always "count" the passengers when sat on the plane. It depends on the layout of the airport. These days it's more usually done on the return leg back to the UK and not always done on the outward leg from the UK. So it's not automatically the plane crew's fault.

The fault will almost certainly be the ground staff who should have been monitoring the exit from the stairwell, i.e. in control of the locked door. I suspect it was a gate where they use a bus to move the passengers from the gate to the plane (there are a few "remote" gates still at Man) and they've simply forgotten about or not noticed the passengers left in the stairwell after the "last" bus had gone.

On my last flight we were also kept waiting in a stairwell on the UK side (Gatwick)! For about 45 mins. I can 100% see how this can happen.

Edited to add: No staff waiting with us.

I avoid Manchester Airport like the plague. It's so badly run it's unsafe.