If you are so bold to say this I hope you are a regional driver. All that takes is a delay code and the carrier will find out why they didn't board, pushback etc. even a call to ops can fix this if they overstep their authority. We have turned the plane back to the gate before after we where told we couldnt wait at the gate because of weather, 1hr on the taxiway with ****ed off passengers a call to ops and what do you know.. a gate opens up. All ops wanted to know was what did the capt think. Don't think the capt doesnt have control at the end of the day. He/she does, read the regs 121/91/61 all pretty much says capt is the final authority. The only ppl that can stop a capt from boarding a j/s is fed and company. The engine start signals from rampers is a safety issue. They are our eyes outside the plane. The CANNOT just flat out push us back leave us on the ramp and tell us we cannot start without some good reason. An act like that would we challenged and the capt will win.

I have seen you once post something about your deployment. So I assume your military, so was I, enlisted. My airwing also had different departments that could stop a flight from going. But if we did, we had to have a good reason to and with auth. from our oic. A pvt. cannot just stop a flight because he didn't like a lt. If that flight was cancelled did it mean that that Pvt. had more authority then the flight crew? no. If the reason wasn't food enough the crew would just tell the CO and get a go/no go, even then CO would take the capt. advice under consideration. In the airlines line of work there are a lot of things that it has incommon with a military. Their has to be some kinda chain of command. The Capt is the final word before going to company and the company will see what the capt thinks.

Does this mean the gate agents have no control at all? no. They can turn away drunk passengers or whatever. If they slip by again the Capt. is the fail safe, if the FA tells him someone slipped by the capt can turn them away. What if the agent insistes on boarding the drunk passenger and the capt. want the passenger off? If they are even equals in authority then we have a problem here. We work in harmony here, we are each others check and balance but at the end of the day only one can make the final call, the Capt. This is also one reason why they get paid more, the burden of command.