29 pax left behind in boarding gate stairwell.
 

Lucky there were 29 of them. It could have been a single passenger - say, someone slow-moving and elderly. Perhaps headcounts are a good idea after all?

Easyjet flight to Bristol leaves 29 passengers stuck in stairwell at Malaga Airport - AOL Travel UK

What difference would a headcount make?

The difference would be that your boarded through the gate figure would not match your total onboard. Simples :cool:

Yep, so 29 pax missing, approaching STD, new load sheet please, load sheet now matches on board figure, bye bye, leave.

Result 29 pax still left behind.

Fairly obviously, it would have told the cc that there were 29 fewer pax on board than had had their boarding cards scanned at the gate, which would have been a serious discrepancy. The flight took off with a bunch of luggage whose owners were not on board - this shouldn't have been allowed, quite apart from the distress of the trapped passengers.

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.

Really? etc.

EasyJet Flight Takes Off Leaving Pax Stuck Between Aircraft and Departure Gate!
 

So an EasyJet aircraft, malaga - bristol, leaves after passengers have proceeded past their boarding gat towards the aircraft. Turns out they were stuck in the tunnel for 20 odd minutes, by which time the aircraft had left with their luggage on board. Wow.

Easyjet plane takes off leaving 29 passengers stranded at Spanish airport | Mail Online

So there would be no reconciliation between the boarding gate and the aircraft? I accept that the situation of passenger(s) being left in the jetway is unusual, but where boarding is by bus or walking across the apron, there are many opportunities for passengers to go AWOL or even get on the wrong aircraft.

Also, the crew usually more or less know the anticipated loading. On the standard 156 (26 x 6) seat EZY config for their smaller aircraft, 29 missing people is more than one empty seat per row, you'd think that would tbe noticed.

Technically, I suppose load sheet and unaccompanied baggage issues might need retrospective paper-work if PIC departed unaware of head-count mismatch. Sounds a bit far fetched, and if true, nobody managed to make a fuss in the time available between doors closed and take-off.

Spain... You said it all.

Since there is no headcount from the cabin crew anymore, I would imagine the despatcher is going to face some trouble...

Knock Spain if you will but I flew from Edinburgh to Gatwick just the other day and nobody checked my ID.
No check of any kind except the glance of the boarding pass as I embarked.

Head count makes all the difference. At our airline it's mandatory. If someone's checked in with baggage and hasn't shown up on board we offload their baggage for security reasons. I don't want to depart with unaccompanied checked in baggage, you never know.

A few months ago I heard a Flybe Dash 8 being told that it could not depart at Manchester. Controller told him he'd just been passed a message by the company for it not to depart. He then told the pilots they had to return to stand as most of his passengers were still in the departure lounge... I'm guessing it was an airport/Flybe issue rather than late passengers as they made it return to stand even when it was at the hold!

Earlier this year I was flying Jakarta-Singapore on Air Asia. Departure was held up about half an hour because we had one too many on board.

It was actually a little funny to watch - cabin crew would go through the cabin doing a head count, then go back to the front and make an announcement that this was flight XXX to Singapore, to make sure Singapore was your destination. This happened several times. Finally they went through checking everyone's boarding pass - found a lady that had gotten on the wrong airplane:=

slack
 

I see the new policy of no headcount is working out well. Just keep that OTP going....:}

That's one of the problems with easyJet they stuff their pax in corridors, jetways & stairwells. This is just so that they can say "boarded on time" & closed the gate on time....even if the aircraft hasn't even landed.
This is what can happened- the pax were basically abandoned.
This is the reason I only fly EZY when there is no alternative.
In the past I've stood in a stairwell for 25 minutes at Malaga, nowhere to sit, no toilets & then shoved on a bus making the speedyboarding useless. Never again !!

It should be of great concern that the aircraft departed, presumably with unaccompanied bags.

I prefer to fly with an airline that only boards when the aircraft is there AND the cabin is ready to receive passengers, this way it is rather less likely that passengers will be "lost".

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.

Strange you should say that......I flew Bilbao - Lanzarote - Bilbao returning 5 days ago and we had a headcount both ways....with a Spanish airline.