One of the least pleasant things at an airport is a “bus gate.” You wait in the gate area and when they call you to board you don’t go down the jetbridge onto the plane, you walk outside and board a bus. Then you wait on the bus until it fills up, and then you wait until the driver is ready to leave. You’re probably standing, with a carry on, crammed with passengers around you. And you drive out to the plane, only to get out and walk up air stairs onto the plane.
Frontier Airlines is actually working with the Denver airport to eliminate jet bridges and board all their flights via stairs because it’s cheaper, even though it sometimes gets very cold in Denver.
At London Heathrow the drive in the bus can seem half as long as the flight itself. At Washington Dulles it’s a “mobile lounge” rather than a bus, and you can board right into one of those off of an international flight. American’s New York JFK terminal 8 has added hardstands (places where planes park away from the terminal) as part of moving in British Airways.
Once you’re on the bus you can usually be confident that you’ll at least make the plane. I’ve never seen passengers miss a flight once on the bus.
Yet somehow Indian low cost carrier Go First boarded passengers on a 1058 mile flight from Bangalore to Delhi onto a bus and then forgot them. Reportedly 55 passengers were left behind. Four buses were used for the flight, but only three bus loads of passengers actually made it into the cabin.
@DGCAIndia @timesofindia @TOIBengaluru @THBengaluru
Flight G8 116 (BLR – DEL) flew leaving passengers on ground! More than 50 passengers on 1 bus was left on ground & flight took off with just passengers of 1 bus on boarded. Is @GoFirstairways operating in sleep? No Basic checks— NIDHI K. (@Nids51) January 9, 2023
Most horrifying experience with @GoFirstairways
5:35 am Boarded the bus for aircraft
6:30 am Still in bus stuffed with over 50 passengers, driver stopped the bus after being forced.
Flight G8 116 takes off, leaving 50+ passengers.
Heights of negligence! @DGCAIndia— Shreya Sinha (@SinhaShreya_) January 9, 2023
Flight G8 116 (BLR – DEL) flew leaving passengers on ground! More than 50 passengers on 1 bus was left on ground & flight took off with just passengers of 1 bus on boarded. Is @GoFirstairways @JM_Scindia @PMOIndia
operating in sleep? No Basic checks. pic.twitter.com/QSPoCisIfc— Satish Kumar (@Satishk98130718) January 9, 2023
Flight G8 116 departed on time at 6:20 a.m. and arrived 29 minutes late at 9:29 a.m. India’s Director General of Civil Aviation blames “lack of proper communication, coordination, reconciliation and confirmation” on the part of the airline.
The coordination failures here by the Airbus A320 operator are mindboggling. Presumably the flight crew had the expected passenger load, and also knew how many people were on board, and would have realized those two numbers were different (by a lot).
Fortunately passengers didn’t have to bus all the way to Delhi and were accommodated on the 10 a.m. departure. Nonetheless this is just another reason why “hardstands” or “bus gates” are always a bad passenger experience.
I landed at Paris CDG last week. The Air France flight from Stockholm landed and attached to a jet bridge. But the doors to the terminal were closed and we were instead forced to take the stairs, exit on the tarmac and board a bus for a 10-minute journey to another part of CDG. And then, another bus ride was required for my connection. Two bus rides. Just ridiculous. I made my connection at final boarding just as the door was closing. I had 90 minutes too.
India! Why did somebody not urinate on the pilot?
This isn’t the first time this has happened in India. But this I seems to be a much higher number of missed bus passengers than a prior incident.
What happened to the Crew passenger count agreeing with the manifest ?
@FNT:
It is also common at FRT. But there, there is an added twist. The flight departed from Schengen area (A gates). As they boarded us, we were told to go down the stairs and on to a bus, not on plane that was there. From there they took us to a plane parked at B gates. Up the stairs and on to plane. Simple explanation. No available gates in Schengen area. So, to avoid making us go through intl. Security, they bussed us around.
And hardstands are a way of life in FRT.
YOU NO GO FIRST
YOU NO GO AT ALL
Speaking about bus gates: DO NOT CONNECT IN SALT LAKE CITY! It’s a total mess there. Horrible bus gates in the freezing cold.
Because it’s Frontier.
I’m a novice on this subject, but maybe someone (Gary?) can educate me: When something like this happens, whether 10 people or 50 people are stuck, I usually read something similar to this remedy, namely that they are put on the next flight. But for decades now it seems like flights are almost always booked full with no seats available. In all of my flights over the past 15 years, every single one has rarely had any empty seat. So…did the carrier bump 55 existing passengers on the 10 am flight in order to accommodate these 55 accidentally left on a bus?
A few years ago taking a Vietnam Airlines flight to an island flying economy, we boarded a bus to take us to the plane in Saigon. Windows were closed in the heat making it hard to breathe, arriving at plane only to wait another 5 minutes for a van to show up with the business class passengers before we were allowed to board the stairs at the rear of the plane where before going up the stairs I gave it to the personnel watching over us. Don’t know if they understood English or not but I wanted to vent. Never received my FF miles either.
@Ed Bus gates at SLC? I’ve connected there quite a few times and never seen those. Is that for RJs or something? Are you talking about the new terminal (which opened in late 2020 and the second half of which is still under construction) or the old one?
To make matters worse, the poor passengers were then given vouchers for free tickets on a future trip with GoFIRST.
Haven’t they suffered enough???
Bus gates at SLC intended to be temporary during construction IIRC
This happened to us in Rome..and as we climbed up steep, wobbly metal stairs, I thought…what about people with physical limitations? No way could they get on that plane!
Making people use stairs on and off a plane is why I will NEVER again use AA through Charlotte.
I am not surprised when it happens in 3rd world countries but it just reeks of cheap in the US
Dangerous for weight and balance
How do they get disabled passengers up & down the stairs? Some friends & I are disabled but can climb stairs SLOWLY! We would get unpleasant stares from flight attendants while we made our way up & down. I don’t remember which airport but they were our ski trips, so very cold, outside!
Was left on the tarmac with 4 others after arri be Al in Moscow Shermetrevo in a snowstorm. We were in told to wait for my a bus to that never arrived. We walked nearly a 1/4 mi with our luggage at night to the terminal. Had to cross two active taxiways. Blowing snow and very cold.
@Nick This is what boggles me. I mean, either the crew neglected to actually survey pax against manifest or they *did* but operations are so terrible, 50+ missing pax were brushed off as nothing to worry about.
So let me get this straight. A plane takes off on time, with 25% less weight than expected. And somehow arrives late? Did they do a time warp? Or are we just seeing the incompetence of the next airline to suffer a plane crash at the hands of Morrons. First… every country needs to ban this airline. And second. India needs to put them on notice and take a better look at their maintenance records. Something tells me this isn’t the first time someone there has falsified records.
Reminds me of an Amercan Airline Flight. 3 of us couples were flying together on separate reservations. One flight was late, we ran to connecting flight showed black agent our tickets, she knew we were coming, yet gave one of our 6 seats to her friend, also black. All 6 of us were then stranded American Airlines did not seem to care. So racist.
It is in the name, Go first. They Go First, then maybe you arrive.
Now put the pilot responsible on NoFLY List. , who ignored all the SOP and took such a huge risk as he flew off with the checked in luggage of all passengers.
Boarding by bus in no different to using the bridge. Infact it’s generally a lot quicker as you board using 2 doors! It’s human incompetence and human stupidity that makes it difficult .
What a Utterly stupid Airline. We’re the F*ing cabin crew that Dumb???? Where the F* were they trained.????
Did nobody have even a little bit of common sense among the cabin crew which had the flight manifest of the names & seat allotments?????
The pilot, co pilot and the Communication officers must be total Dumbass morons to have taken off with the passengers still sitting in the bus, on the tarmac…..
Total bunch of Dumbass idiots trying to run an Airline …..
“Frontier Airlines is actually working with the Denver airport to eliminate jet bridges and board all their flights via stairs because it’s cheaper, even though it sometimes gets very cold in Denver.”
“Hey taxpayers, you paid us big bucks to build a new modern airport, but we’re going to allow a 2nd rate airline run by idiotic MBAs to get us to dismantle one of the features that “modern” airports usually have. “
It is a Security Hazard. How they released the flight without getting a correct count of Passengers accepted for travel. No Passenger No baggage is the Rule. I am sure many of the 55 passengers would have had checked in bags. Copy of Passenger List and Load and Trim Sheet is given to the Cabin Crew and Load and Trim Sheet to the Capt. Did the Cabin Crew not reconcile the total on board after finding many empty seats. In todays aircraft when one Kilo of Weight is added it is duly reflected on the Computer Controls. When the Total Weight reflected on the Load and Trim sheet could not be tallied with the one in the Computer did it not raise suspicion in the minds of FO and Commander of the aircraft. With 55 passengers less the Mach and Stab Trim readings would have changed hugely and this should also have raised doubts the correctness of the readings..
It happened on an Air India flight to Singapore from Mumbai via Madras. Some of the BOM-MAA Domestic passengers travelling on the flight were left behind. Of Course those days Domestic and International Passengers used to be boarded from different areas and there were no nose-in bays those days. Still the different boarding areas should not have made a difference as it was being done on all flights having Domestic passengers kind courtesy Customs.
Kiran vagale says:
January 14, 2023 at 10:03 am
What a Utterly stupid Airline. We’re the F*ing cabin crew that Dumb???? Where the F* were they trained.????
Did nobody have even a little bit of common sense among the cabin crew which had the flight manifest of the names & seat allotments?????
The pilot, co pilot and the Communication officers must be total Dumbass morons to have taken off with the passengers still sitting in the bus, on the tarmac…..
Total bunch of Dumbass idiots trying to run an Airline ….
Indeed!!!!
N Ramachandran says:
January 15, 2023 at 9:36 am
It is a Security Hazard. How they released the flight without getting a correct count of Passengers accepted for travel. No Passenger No baggage is the Rule. I am sure many of the 55 passengers would have had checked in bags. Copy of Passenger List and Load and Trim Sheet is given to the Cabin Crew and Load and Trim Sheet to the Capt. Did the Cabin Crew not reconcile the total on board after finding many empty seats. In todays aircraft when one Kilo of Weight is added it is duly reflected on the Computer Controls. When the Total Weight reflected on the Load and Trim sheet could not be tallied with the one in the Computer did it not raise suspicion in the minds of FO and Commander of the aircraft. With 55 passengers less the Mach and Stab Trim readings would have changed hugely and this should also have raised doubts the correctness of the readings..
The flight crew did not check the manifest? They did not even wonder that there many vacant seats? Likewise, the captain and co-pilot as well as the flight crew and airport staff did not communicate at all? Tricycle drivers might be more responsible than all of these guys.
This happens when people are hired without any experience and on recommendation happening in India and Pakistan also God bless them