I just read this bizarre story about a flight from Australia to New Zealand where, after the passengers had boarded, a cabin crew member became ill, and the flight needed to lose 13 passengers before it could take off (safety regulations mean you have to have at least a certain ratio of crew to passengers). Apparently there was a lot of trouble encouraging people to get off, as it doesn’t seem that much incentive was given, and the airline resorted to bullying tactics.

Some people reluctantly got off after they were offered a free flight in future, but if I were the captain of the plane I would have conducted an auction … The only question would be whether to sell the right to stay on the flight or pay people to get off. From an efficiency point of view it doesn’t matter, as long as the required number of people get off. But I guess from a PR point of view it would be better to pay people to get off. With 90 passengers in the auction, the amount the airline would have to pay to get people off probably wouldn’t be too high.