Apology: EasyJet apologises after leaving 29 passengers at gate - Europe - World - The Independent

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!

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.

Even if I had spotted that they'd departed avec unaccompanied bags (:=) and despite the egg sucking lesson...get me a new load sheet and then.....ciao.

What difference would a headcount make?

$$MONEY$$

fixed it for ya...

@edi
Being trapped is a huge fire risk. Emergency systems do not allways work as designed espescially when smoke and panic is involved.

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.

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.

In this case, the pax were trapped accidentally. But a person who'd stuck a bomb in their luggage might also 'escape' between gate and plane. How would the crew know the difference?

Well I've just looked on Flightstats and it turns out it was the exact same airbridge which did this a few years ago:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3019/...825e68329e.jpg

Maybe that was what caused the issue at the boarding gate? Just a suggestion :)

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?

Judging from the media reports, no.

Yeah they were boarding via Airbridge at Gate B12 (sometimes it's gate B13 as gates B12 and B13 are just two boarding card checkers right next to each other but both can be used at one as the other passengers get bussed) The airbridges however at Piers B and C are not see-through so they are harder to notice (Gate C31 and Pier D are).

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):

It seems that they were boarding from an airbridge. Click on this link and the white line shows that the aircraft was parked right next to the terminal building on an airbridge stand.

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).

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.

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.

OK, I stand corrected.

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.

Looking at shots of AGP, and the video in post #33, the airbridges have the usual escape stairs right at the end, just before you turn left to board the aircraft.

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).

Watch the Boarding Aer Lingus video. As you can see there is a slope like stairwell with lots of windows where you can see the aircraft and airbridge. :)

Not at Malaga. Everyone boards via Airbridge :ok: