If the airline makes a mistake and realizes that mistake too late, they should take the hit themselves, not punish an innocent passenger for their own mistake.
Airlines should make a better effort to avoid overbooking. If they can get away with this kind of despicable behaviour, they'll never improve.
> they should take the hit themselves, not punish an innocent passenger for their own mistake.
If they don't get their crew to the other airport, the next day a full plane load of people (or more, due to knock-on effects) might have been denied a flight.
Nobody disputes that better planning would be better, or that they should not have let everyone on board.
However, mistakes happen. For operational reasons, now the flight had a smaller capacity. Could have been that the seatbelt for a seat didn't work, or weight & balance issues.
At that point, it strikes me as perfectly legit to seek volunteers, and then, well, disembark pax involuntarily (while giving them all the help and compensation that they're entitled to, and more).
That's hardly "intentionally screwing over paying passengers".
What they're entitled to, is a seat on the plane that they booked and paid for. And whatever the problems that this airline might run into if they don't do this, they're not taking into account the problems they're causing for others by doing this. The guy was a doctor who had to be in a hospital the next morning. What if a patient dies because of this?
Sure, mistakes happen. But the real mistake here is that the airline punishes passengers for the airline's mistakes. They should be taking responsibility for their own mistakes, rather than take them out on their customers.
Given this situation with an overbooked plane due to their own stupid lack of planning, they could and should have offered more money until someone did volunteer. That would have been cheaper than this travesty, and not a single person would have complained about it. Instead, they short-sightedly try to save some money by having the police (who also don't work for free) drag a perfectly legitimate customer out of the plane.
It's a distressing rejection of responsibility for their own actions.
Airlines should make a better effort to avoid overbooking. If they can get away with this kind of despicable behaviour, they'll never improve.