Independence Air iClub - IA Plane Weight Limitation -- A Great Reason to Check in Online

This happened over Thanksgiving weekend and I found it odd. I was taking an IA flight back to IAD amidst the craziness that is the Monday after Thanksgiving. Every seat on the jet was taken, but from my quick survey, there were no excessively obese people on the plane. The flight attendant announced that the plane was over its weight limit and asked two people to give up their seats (in addition to 13 random bags that wouldn't make it to IAD on that flight). No compensation was offered, and she also mentioned that all of the other flights out to IAD for the day were also full, so the passengers wouldn't even be guarenteed a flight back that Monday. OK, obviously no one offered to give up their seat, so the flight attendant pulled off the last two people to check in to the flight. Thankfully, i had checked in online the night before, and it wasn't me.

I was totally shocked that 1) IA would faster pluck people off a plane, rather than pull more bags and 2) No compensation was offered. I mean really, just a few days earlier they were giving away free flight voucher "prizes" to passengers in the IAD departure wing -- they couldn't offer the same to passengers they had inconvenienced? And why would they sell out a plane if it couldn't fly with all the passengers -- were they just counting on no-shows?

Has this type of incident happened to anyone else on an IA flight, or any other airline for that matter?

Every seat on the jet was taken, but from my quick survey, there were no excessively obese people on the plane.

Weight and balance calcs use a standard average weight for passengers, they don't weigh individual passengers. Most airlines have increased the numbers they use, since the Air Midwest crash almost 3 years ago in Charlotte.

Yeah, I know that. Obviously, a plane does not count on having a plane full of 350 lb passengers on any single flight. I was just mentioning that there were no extremely obese people on the plane to suggest that the average estimated weight per person was probably right at or higher than the actual average weight across the plane.