Unaccompanied Bags on a LoCo flight to UK….

Ah, further to my post above, I’ve just found this article that gives a bit more information…http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Easyjet-passengers-locked-corridor-plane-leaves/story-19901080-detail/story.html

It appears that the group of 29 passengers got stuck in a stairwell as the security doors closed on them preventing them from boarding.

If the staff who worked the departure gate were missing 29 passengers prior to closing the aircraft door you would have thought that they would have at least questioned the possible location of such a large number of people and/or possibly sent an agent to check the areas between the plane and the gate to see if they were around?

Based on this, I believe that their baggage should have been offloaded too. I can imagine some difficult questions being asked of the staff in Malaga because EasyJet will now have incurred additional costs due to them having to pay out for the transport for the people who went to Gatwick and the accomdation for those that stayed the night in Malaga. Plus, I suspect the customers who stayed will have been re-booked at no extra cost so they will have also lost out on any potential revenue from not being able to sell those seats to other passengers that might have wanted to fly at the last minute.

The flight departed with the group still in the airport on Saturday evening because of “an issue at the boarding gate”, a spokesman said.

Seeing as I deal with departing flights on a daily basis at work I can tell you based on my own experiences that there can be lots of “issues” at the boarding gate and it is not always the fault of the airline…passengers turning up too late to board the flight (even though they managed to check-in ahead of schedule!), being held up by airport security and also the loss of their passport are just some of the most frequent reasons; however these usually only affect the odd one or two people so it seems strange that a large number [29] of people did not travel. It might also have been an issue with the aircraft that resulted in some of the seats being unable to be occupied for safety reasons. Seems as though EasyJet did the right thing though by offering to take the customers to another airport on the same day or re-booking them for the next day, however its difficult to tell as the article does not really mention too much about the circumstances of the incident (probably at the request of EasyJet!).

I didn’t think flights were allowed to take off carrying unaccompanied bags these days?

Bags shouldn’t normally travel unaccompanied. If a passenger is offloaded at the boading gate, the ramp team have to be given their baggage tag details and then the bags are taken off the plane. The only time a bag can/should travel unaccompanied is if it has not been loaded onto a previous flight and a passenger has lodged a missing claim with the airline, as it then becomes the airlines responsibility to get the bag back to the passenger as soon as possible once it has been located.

As the article states though, all bags would have been security screened so there would have been no risk to passegner or crew safety/security, but it is rather strange that the passengers hold baggage was not taken off prior to departure.