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 am disabled and board the plane first to avoid queuing and get my luggage over head/ avoid being knocked. Quite often they call for priority passengers and have us waiting at the bottom of a stairwell in a corridor for ages, not knowing what is happening. So I can see how this could quite easily happen.

“But instead of carrying on onto the plane, there were some stairs so the herd mentality is that we all went down the stairs and followed each other. There was a lot of us.”

So could they not have tried going up the stairs instead of down as they were already on the stairs? Not saying the plane should’ve left without them but the article suggests there should’ve been a piece of rope sending them up instead of down. I think I would’ve sent someone from the group to look or knock a door if we were approaching take off time

I've often wondered about folk who do not need wheelchair or other assistance but cannot stand for long periods. My DH gets the airport assistance and it is very helpful. He cannot walk the distances or stand for long periods these days but is otherwise ok, so gets either a wheelchair or buggy to the gate.

After that you're on your own really, which is fine if you plan a bit. We get on last, we mention to the gate staff that standing is an issue, and they usually give us the nod so as soon as the "stairwell" group starts moving we get on the end of the queue. It doesn't always work though, since it might LOOK like the queue is moving, but it often comes to an abrupt halt!

As if nobody noticed 30 passengers missing . Surely they would be on the flight manifest.
Did nobody think to radio the ground staff to enquire?
I would love to be a fly on the wall in the investigation meeting 😉

I think you have to "over do" the disability bit really in airports. Like your DH, mine is OK, but can't walk/stand for long periods of time due to his bone cancer, so has to constantly sit down. He pre-books airport assistance and declares disability to the airline. On a good day, in a smaller/efficient airport, he'd not need help as he'd manage fine, but he can't risk it, so gets a buggie through the airport and then presents himself at the check in desk and gets a seat close to the gate and boards first (with other disabled/prams etc). Still doesn't help when he's stuck in the Manchester stairwells but they often put him in the lift to go up/down first and find a seat closer to the door waiting for the bus/walk to the plane which helps him a lot.

An airport really isn't the place to get arsey.

Im thinking about my sciatica and also the fact that I need the loo around every 20 mins or so. Awful

What exactly is on this manifest that gets mentioned?

One system I've seen the cabin crew might get a verbal brief of the total booked load...they might just get told "absolutely rammed", "a few empty seats"..."not many passengers:..that's it.

No guarantee for them of being given a final passenger number, and sometimes no list of passenger names (which I think is perhaps what some thinks a manifesr is) since there is/was no legal requirement for them to have one onboard.

The flight crew (i.e. pilots) may have been given an estimated total on board during boarding, and at some point a final definitive figure for performance calculations but that possibly wouldn't be subject to a headcount or possibly even communicated with the cabin crew...depends on Jet2's procedures.

So to cut to the chase unless someone on the cabin crew side had been told "you should be absolutely full, there will be no empty seats" it's hard to see that there's much blame on the crew side.

@notimagain

I'm a former travel rep.

The manifest tells the pilots and crew exactly how many passengers there are supposed to be on board, and an approximate weight of the aircraft load (people plus baggage). 38 missing passengers would mean that the aircraft would be underweight by about 3,200kg so the pilots should have noticed this - either this would indicate that lots of baggage had not been loaded or that a number of passengers were missing, or a mixture of both. An airport employee brings a confirmation of this information on board once everyone has boarded.

The cabin manager would also know exactly how many passengers were supposed to board, how many had actually checked in and how many had passed the boarding desk. Most Jet2/TUI/Easyjet/Ryanair aircraft have about 190 seats, and an experienced cabin manager should have noticed if there were 38 people missing. When cabin crew conduct a head count they don't usually count the number of people, instead they count the number of empty seats - for example, if there are supposed to be 170 people on board a 190-seat aircraft, it's easier to count 20 empty seats than count 170 people, and usually two crew members do the count independently.

What I take from this story is that my supposedly far fetched anxieties when it comes to airports can actually materialise! Plenty of times I've anxiously told my partner "are we even queuing at the right place?! Why is there no staff to be seen?! I'm betting you the plane has left!!!" for him to reassure me that it's just my anxiety 😂🤣

Yeah it sounds like airport fuck up in the sense that there were no signs and evidently more than one free routes. Passengers randomly went down instead of up because they didn't consult their crystal ball, "down" wasn't roped off, and the staff who checked them in didn't bother telling them where to go - or confirmed they've made it out of the building even!!

Sounds like when they boarded rows 1-26 they guided those passengers better and at least those peeps ended up on the plane!

The same scenario has happened to me loads of times where you're checked in, then you take a turn down a corridor thinking it'll be super obvious where you have to go but then you have more than one options on where to go, with no signs or indication or anything. It sounds like I've been lucky so far!

A few times I've had the same anxious feeling when left pretty much on my own devices on the tarmac, just had someone point to a plane and told to go "there" but there's identical planes one next to another departing every 5 mins in the summer 😬 You can easily end up on the wrong plane.

If you’ve booked a wheelchair via the airline then you’re a priority passenger and can board the plane early. I don’t need a wheelchair but I’m still a priority passenger. I book it in advance with the airline. Usually when there’s boarding they call out priority boarding, if they don’t I send my husband up and they call me over. I’ve had a few rude comments from uneducated staff about it being the line for disabled people but I shut that down quickly. I have MS- definitely disabled.

This helps a bit because it avoids me squeezing past multiple people in the aisles, makes sure my overhead is near me as I have medication. But I am quite often left standing around for ages. Sometimes I have to sit on the ground.

@Havanananana

I'm ex flight crew and have seen a bit of this, so I'm a bit wary of thinking one size fits all when it comes to how this works (for example things like headcounts are not universal, manifests are not all the same) hence my reluctance to jump in and blame the crew.

38 missing passengers would mean that the aircraft would be underweight by about 3,200kg so the pilots should have noticed this

Not when on the ground (unless things have changed and the aircraft onboard systems can display measured gross weight).

I can only really speak for one system but as an example usually for the sake of getting performance calculations done early the pilots would possibly have been presented with weights based on booked load/number checked in, and in this case that would include the missing passengers,.since they're not yet missing....hence no sign of an underload in those provisional figures to alert the pilots.

Later on, pre-take-off they'd.probably be given a set of final figures by hand/radio/datalink based on the number of passengers through the gate...now if the missing passengers hadn't gone through the gate then the underload would have shown up on the final paperwork...

Problem here is since they had gone through the gate their weight was on the final loadsheet, so on the pilots's paperwork so no obvious underload.

(I'll emphasise the above system is how a lot of airlines work but might not be how Jet2 do it)

IMIO the only time any underload/miss load might have been obvious to the pilots was if the take-off was unusually swift/sporty....or if the trim was significantly out as a result of the missing passengers.

I'd suggest the route cause for this probably lies with the airport system and the ground side of the operation

The (cabin) crew are only there on a H&S basis.

A big H&S obligation is that passanger jets and the passengers dont get blown to bits on the runway or fall from the sky.

If no staff on the plane has been given responsibility to check that the passengers who checked in a possible bomb are on the flight the airline has designed a rather large hole in the security.

If no staff on the plane has been given responsibility to check that the passengers who checked in a possible bomb are on the flight the airline has designed a rather large hole in the security.

The responsibility for doing exactly that has been delegated at many places to the ground staff, usually in the form of the semi-automated jetty head boarding pass swipe and TBH is probably better done by them at that stage than relying on the cabin crew using mark one eyeball on the nth rushed turn of a multi sector day..

There are also real limitations to how useful or practical headcounts are, especially when you start handling maybe 500 passengers plus on some Long Haul flights....good luck clicking that lot.

The system usually works very very well...that it got fouled up spectacularly at Manchester is down to that airport's management.

40mins isnt that bad. Ive waited 30mins at Stansted on the stairs.

I do worry at airports that there are many large areas with no official staff around at all; long corridors going on and on and endless travellers trying to get to the right place at the right time. No wonder these passengers accepted this wait with no one around as normal. Do hope this is fully investigated as we are treated like animals being moved from pillar to post yet we are paying customers.

Yes, this ! What were the staff on the aeroplane thinking, surely they wondered where all the people had gone ?

They hadn’t seen the people to wonder where they had gone

This all goes back to how many passengers were they expecting to.see.

If they'd been told "flight booked out, completely full" then empty seats would have rung bells, a whole block of empty seats might have raised eyebrows

If OTOH the brief was "we're fairly full" then a scattering of empty seats across the aircraft might not have caused alarm.

Have to also say if you have the right sort of access to systems you can maybe look at a booked load an hour before the flight and think, even maybe tell crew "definitely full" and then find due e.g. traffic jams around the airport or a bus breaking down you end up with empty seats.

ETA that to my mind the big issue here is thz ease of staircase access.

At many airports staircase access,.even for a fire route, would have been protected by an alarmed door.

Erm, airlines absolutely do know how many passengers they're expecting and they do check.

The boarding pass scanner will be counting or they have a list and cross off names.

Then you see them counting on board, this is usually by empty seats especially with Jet2 as their flights are usually 90%+ full.

Jet2 planes generally hold 200 to 230 passengers so 38 missing is going to be very noticeable.

I've waited on those stairs before and sometimes your do have to queue for a long time so I can completely understand why the passengers didn't think it was odd.
The crew should have realised though!

“Airlines” of course know how many have booked tickets and how many have “boarded” the flight. They were “boarded” as they were scanned at the gate. The problem is that a door to a stairwell, which should probably have been locked and roped off, was left open and the passengers entered instead of getting on the flight.

I am not understanding your point that a flight with a possible capacity for 300 and generally flying with around 90% full seats, would be alarmingly and obviously missing passengers because 10% of its seats were empty 🤔

Any manifest that I have ever seen has not only the exact number of expected passengers, but also their names. The initial pre-flight document is based on booking information and is used by the flight crew to calculate how much fuel is needed, and also for mundane things like how much coffee, water, snacks etc. needs to be ordered in advance. At this point the crew will not yet know how many no-show passengers there might be, but they plan according to the booking information available at the time.

Once everyone has checked in and passed the boarding gate there is a second manifest document. Modern systems track the progress of passengers as they move through the airport. Even if they have no baggage and have checked in online, their boarding passes are scanned when they enter Airside at the security point, and scanned again when they pass the boarding desk. The second document - i.e. the live manifest that is produced after everyone has passed the boarding desk - tells the crew exactly who is supposed to have boarded the flight and how many passengers should be on board. If people are delayed in traffic, a bus breaks down or they simply fall asleep in Wetherspoons, then they won't appear on the live manifest as they will not have passed the boarding desk and their boarding cards will not have been scanned. Similarly, anyone who is on stand-by and who is given a last-minute seat will not have appeared on the first manifest, but will appear on the second, live document. It doesn't matter if the flight has 50 or 500 passengers, everyone is supposed to be accounted for, and the cabin manager has the responsibilty for ensuring that they know exactly how many people are on board and should be experienced enough to be able to spot if the flight has almost 40 passengers fewer than expected.

This is important for security reasons, so that nobody can check in a suitcase with a bomb in it and then not take the flight. If a passenger checks their luggage in but then fails to pass the boarding desk, then their bag is taken off the aircraft.

Then you see them counting on board, this is usually by empty seats especially with Jet2 as their flights are usually 90%+ full.

Genuine question - are Jet2 crew required to always do headcounts? Just to reiterate it's no longer done at many airlines.

Jet2 planes generally hold 200 to 230 passengers so 38 missing is going to be very noticeable.

Maybe, but of course that's roughly one/two empty seat a row. If that was the empty seat distribution would it ring alarms?

In any event the important thing here isn't the aircraft's capacity, it's what load was the crew told to expect?

I know I'm pushing.back on this but it's really not on at all to start blaming the crew,. almost by default, without having all the facts or knowing Jet2's procedures.

Route cause of this at this stage seems to be airport managed to find a way of losing 38 passengers between the top of the jetty and the aircraft....that takes some doing.