Narrative:

During boarding the ramp agent said they had numerous small items that belonged to some military passengers. The ramper thought that he was going to have a hard time getting the items on the flight. I overheard the first officer tell him that if they were identifiable personal items they could be placed in the overhead with their owner's permission. That was the end of that conversation. I did not hear back from him; so I assumed nothing out of the ordinary for loading. We received the weight manifest from the ramper and entered the numbers into ACARS. After landing we found 8 garment bags in the overhead bins. I removed them from the plane and asked the ramper if this was a security concern. He said no but; he did not understand why they loaded it that way. I agreed and verified that there was not a problem with the ramper. The first time that I heard there was a discrepancy between the manifest and the actual load was 11 days later. I would not have started the flight had I known there were checked bags in the cabin or that the count was wrong. Thankfully; the ultimate error resulted in numbers and data for a weight greater than actual; thus making our data more conservative. The aircraft was out of weight and center of gravity. This negates the performance data that was calculated for this flight.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A mix-up in the proper boarding of personal baggage of military passengers resulted in the CRJ-200 flight crew departing with inaccurate weight manifest and performance data--fortunately on the conservative side.

Narrative: During boarding the ramp agent said they had numerous small items that belonged to some military passengers. The ramper thought that he was going to have a hard time getting the items on the flight. I overheard the First Officer tell him that if they were identifiable personal items they could be placed in the overhead with their owner's permission. That was the end of that conversation. I did not hear back from him; so I assumed nothing out of the ordinary for loading. We received the weight manifest from the ramper and entered the numbers into ACARS. After landing we found 8 garment bags in the overhead bins. I removed them from the plane and asked the ramper if this was a security concern. He said no but; he did not understand why they loaded it that way. I agreed and verified that there was not a problem with the ramper. The first time that I heard there was a discrepancy between the manifest and the actual load was 11 days later. I would not have started the flight had I known there were checked bags in the cabin or that the count was wrong. Thankfully; the ultimate error resulted in numbers and data for a weight greater than actual; thus making our data more conservative. The aircraft was out of weight and center of gravity. This negates the performance data that was calculated for this flight.

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.