Narrative:

At push time the gate agent gave us a count of 81+1 infant. We closed the cabin door and were ready to start the push when a passenger came forward and said that the rest of his family had not gotten on the aircraft. Since it was two minutes past our scheduled push time anyway I elected to open the cabin door and find out where his family was. The gate agent said that they had 'stopped for pizza' and that is why they were not there. Just about three minutes after we opened the door approximately 10-12 more passengers arrived and boarded the aircraft including the above mentioned family. We closed the door and pushed only to realize that we hadn't received a new count from the gate agent. We called the first flight attendant and asked her to give us a count. She stated that we had 120+1; which was grossly different than the 90+1 we expected after the ten or so late arriving passengers boarded. We asked operations to check with the gate and get the final count. The gate came back with 90+1 infant. We told operations that the flight attendants counted 120+1 and to recontact the gate for clarification. We taxied fully expecting to get a corrected count and weight and balance from load planning. We waited so long in line waiting that we shut down an engine to conserve fuel. After waiting about fifteen minutes we contacted dispatch in a final attempt to get a weight and balance and were instructed to return to the gate to have a full recount of the passengers. I am angry that so much emphasis is placed on our on-time push that gate agents have the attitude to get the door closed without regard to safety. How can a gate agent not realize that there are 30 more people on the aircraft than the there should be; especially when he/she just took the tickets? I can only attribute it to this rush to push on time. Incidentally; the passengers whose family was supposed to have 'stopped for pizza' had in fact been delayed after clearing customs and they then had to clear another security check. Why would we leave at least ten passengers at the gate on the last flight of the day to a city when we could have left a few minutes late and arrived on time at our destination? The only answer in my mind is this mindless focus on departing on-time. I see it all of the time flying the line and feel that it has the potential for disaster.this causes me to have serious concerns about the reliability of the count we get from the gate. In this instance; if I had not chosen to allow the late arriving passengers to board the aircraft we would have weighed approximately 6;000 more than the final weight and balance indicated. This is not a minor discrepancy! This is the one aspect of our weight and balance program in which there is potentially a fatal flaw-that being there is nothing to prevent a gross error. I believe that our company is not operating at the level of safety we should be in this area and it should implement a mandatory passenger count by the flight attendants to prevent this type of gross error. We normally simply accept the count given to by the gate agent and since the flight attendants don't know the count they have no way of knowing what we are given.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A319 Captain reports discovering a 30 passenger discrepancy between the Gate Agent count and the Flight Attendant count. On time performance considerations are thought to have influenced the Gate Agent's actions.

Narrative: At push time the gate agent gave us a count of 81+1 infant. We closed the cabin door and were ready to start the push when a passenger came forward and said that the rest of his family had not gotten on the aircraft. Since it was two minutes past our scheduled push time anyway I elected to open the cabin door and find out where his family was. The gate agent said that they had 'stopped for pizza' and that is why they were not there. Just about three minutes after we opened the door approximately 10-12 more passengers arrived and boarded the aircraft including the above mentioned family. We closed the door and pushed only to realize that we hadn't received a new count from the gate agent. We called the First Flight Attendant and asked her to give us a count. She stated that we had 120+1; which was grossly different than the 90+1 we expected after the ten or so late arriving passengers boarded. We asked Operations to check with the gate and get the final count. The gate came back with 90+1 infant. We told operations that the Flight Attendants counted 120+1 and to recontact the gate for clarification. We taxied fully expecting to get a corrected count and weight and balance from load planning. We waited so long in line waiting that we shut down an engine to conserve fuel. After waiting about fifteen minutes we contacted Dispatch in a final attempt to get a weight and balance and were instructed to return to the gate to have a full recount of the passengers. I am angry that so much emphasis is placed on our on-time push that gate agents have the attitude to get the door closed without regard to safety. How can a gate agent not realize that there are 30 more people on the aircraft than the there should be; especially when he/she just took the tickets? I can only attribute it to this rush to push on time. Incidentally; the passengers whose family was supposed to have 'stopped for pizza' had in fact been delayed after clearing customs and they then had to clear another security check. Why would we leave at least ten passengers at the gate on the last flight of the day to a city when we could have left a few minutes late and arrived on time at our destination? The only answer in my mind is this mindless focus on departing on-time. I see it all of the time flying the line and feel that it has the potential for disaster.This causes me to have serious concerns about the reliability of the count we get from the gate. In this instance; if I had not chosen to allow the late arriving passengers to board the aircraft we would have weighed approximately 6;000 more than the final weight and balance indicated. This is not a minor discrepancy! This is the one aspect of our weight and balance program in which there is potentially a fatal flaw-that being there is nothing to prevent a gross error. I believe that our Company is not operating at the level of safety we should be in this area and it should implement a mandatory passenger count by the Flight Attendants to prevent this type of gross error. We normally simply accept the count given to by the gate agent and since the Flight Attendants don't know the count they have no way of knowing what we are given.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.