29 pax left behind in boarding gate stairwell.
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Risk is being trapped if there is a fire. Got stuck in major UK airport between pax entrance at top of stairs and apron exit. Didn't have appropriate airport pass so was stuck for 10 mins and not happy!
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There isn't a fire risk. The doors all have emergency releases (big green buttons marked emergency release) next to them which disable the magnet. Also, they will usually disable automatically allowing them to be opened in an emergency.
Also, failing all that they can be forced open by using not too hard a pull/push. I've seen it happen before. I saw an irate passenger who missed a flights pull open doors at one UK airport and try to walk down the jetty. Staff stopped him after about 2 footsteps, and I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to achieve anyway, but the fact remains these doors are not 100% secure, so there isn't any risk to life of being stuck behind them.
Not saying that what happened was good, but there was no risk of death involved.
Also, failing all that they can be forced open by using not too hard a pull/push. I've seen it happen before. I saw an irate passenger who missed a flights pull open doors at one UK airport and try to walk down the jetty. Staff stopped him after about 2 footsteps, and I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to achieve anyway, but the fact remains these doors are not 100% secure, so there isn't any risk to life of being stuck behind them.
Not saying that what happened was good, but there was no risk of death involved.
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LSM, no shows are those who don't present themselves at the gate, not on board the aircraft. These pax went through the gate, so there was a discrepancy between the load sheet and those on board. Not to mention the security issue of bags in the hold with no owners on board.
) and despite the egg sucking lesson...get me a new load sheet and then.....ciao. What difference would a headcount make?
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Far more serious than the unaccompanied baggage is the possibility that with this number of passengers missing - 2.5Tonnes worth, the aircraft could have departed while seriously out of trim. It didn't crash so luckily it wasn't. Safety is the airlines number one priority.
fixed it for ya...
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Can't see an issue with leaving with non-boarded passengers' luggage on board. The passengers would have had no way of knowing they would not be on board.
Baggage OFTEN travels alone, but almost impossible for punter to know this in advance and/or which flight/aircraft it is on.
Baggage OFTEN travels alone, but almost impossible for punter to know this in advance and/or which flight/aircraft it is on.
Last edited by ExXB; 9th Oct 2013 at 10:09.
ID check (which achieves nothing, by the way) is not required on UK domestic flights, and several operators, not least BA, do not do it.
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Can't see an issue with leaving with non-boarded passengers' luggage on board. The passengers would have had no way of knowing they would not be on board.
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Well I've just looked on Flightstats and it turns out it was the exact same airbridge which did this a few years ago:
Maybe that was what caused the issue at the boarding gate? Just a suggestion
Maybe that was what caused the issue at the boarding gate? Just a suggestion
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I'm not familiar with Malaga airport, but I presume the passengers were boarding via an airbridge? If so, what happened to the member of staff that backed the airbridge away from the plane so that it could push-back? Surely they would have walked back up the tunnel to the gate and seen 29 passengers standing there? Wouldn't they have notified someone to make sure the plane didn't take off?
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I'm not familiar with Malaga airport, but I presume the passengers were boarding via an airbridge? If so, what happened to the member of staff that backed the airbridge away from the plane so that it could push-back? Surely they would have walked back up the tunnel to the gate and seen 29 passengers standing there? Wouldn't they have notified someone to make sure the plane didn't take off?
Was there a chance maybe that they were waiting between the airbridge and the Gate as Malaga has a section where you have to go down the slope before you get to the actual airbridge.
Here in this video it shows the point once you have shown your passport & boarding card. This is Gate B17 which is two gates to the right of Saturday Night's Incident (I've never left from B before but I have arrived there and all the gates In Piers B and C are similar and do this):
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Judging from the media reports, no.
Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker!
They would have used the airbridge as I have never seen an aircraft board via steps on these stands. Believe it or not even Ryanair 95% of the time always use them. (Which I wonder why they were complaining about using them at Alicante but not Malaga).
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The offloading of baggage if the passenger does not show up is a bit out dated. Does everything not get screened? Do people now happily blow themselves up with everyone else? Personally I think it is a waste of time looking for and offloading bags.
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Sloppy Joe,
If someone checks in a bag and then doesn't show up the gate, or for a connecting flight must be viewed as suspicious. That is exactly what happened with AI182, and the explosion at NRT an hour later of a bag checked through to AI301, in 1985.
This case is not the same thing.
If someone checks in a bag and then doesn't show up the gate, or for a connecting flight must be viewed as suspicious. That is exactly what happened with AI182, and the explosion at NRT an hour later of a bag checked through to AI301, in 1985.
This case is not the same thing.
Last edited by ExXB; 9th Oct 2013 at 16:28. Reason: Typo
It seems that they were boarding from an airbridge.
Out of interest, could somebody who is familiar with Malaga Airport explain the references to the passengers being "stuck in a boarding gate stairwell", and the quote from one of them in the DM "I looked through the doors onto the airport apron and the plane had gone".
I'd have thought that, once on the departures level of the terminal, boarding the aircraft via an airbridge wouldn't have involved going down (or up) any stairs ?
Just curious.
Unless they went halfway down the air bridge then down the steps and out the door. Usually happens when the air bridge is u/s.
Clearly that's not the stairway being referred to in the reports - 29 passengers standing on those steps would be bl**dy obvious to everybody (and would have been free to descend to the apron, causing chaos and confusion all around).
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Out of interest, could somebody who is familiar with Malaga Airport explain the references to the passengers being "stuck in a boarding gate stairwell", and the quote from one of them in the DM "I looked through the doors onto the airport apron and the plane had gone".
I'd have thought that, once on the departures level of the terminal, boarding the aircraft via an airbridge wouldn't have involved going down (or up) any stairs ?
I'd have thought that, once on the departures level of the terminal, boarding the aircraft via an airbridge wouldn't have involved going down (or up) any stairs ?
This happens in a few airports where boarding happens via both the airbridge and steps at the rear of the aircraft. Not sure if that also happens in AGP.
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I'm puzzled by the mention of the 'perfume shop', that was presumably close enough to the stairwell that the trapped passengers could attract their attention. Do you get duty-free shops right next to the gate in Malaga?