Weirdest thing yesterday flying to AKL. We were happily taxiing along the runway, settled in and engrossed in the crossword when the PA came over that we were returning to the gate as we had one passenger on board who shouldn't be there, and one missing (scarily, whose bag was in the hold).
Been trying to work it out ever since. First reason given was 'some boarding passes were printed that shouldn't have been'. Took ages to resolve @ the gate. It seemed like they didn't even know who or how many were on board or where the extra person was. They had us all show our boarding passes and finally ascertained the seat they were looking for ('does anyone have a boarding pass with 19D on it'?). Finally a guy was escorted off. We waited for the lost pax- with-a-checked-bag, and that was a further delay. But he never turned up, and so off we went again.
Question 1: (the scary one for me ). What of the checked bag? There was none of the customary noise of the hold being opened, things being moved aroind. maybe technology has improved to the point they can pin point exactly what bag, where and maybe it was really accessible. But it didn't seem like that bag was offloaded. I've been on flights (admittedly long, long ago) where pax and bags were unloaded onto the Tarmac and id'd when they couldn't be matched. And it was all so chaotic with flight attendants, capt, ground staff buzzing around, no-one seemed to know what was going on. Spent the flight a bit nervous and wondering about this bizarre coincidence of being one over one under, and the one under not being picked up despite so many checks

Q2: how on earth did the one-over get on board with all the checks and balances, in this day and age? Would the system really print a boarding pass for completely the wrong flight (which is the most logical explanation for him getting through gate, fa at door. I guess headcount understandable if they were missing one. One assumes they worked out something was up when the missing pax turned up. But for the extra one to be in the same seat. Whaaaat?

It's the bag thing that really bothered me, the rest just idle curiosity.