corporate-wage-slave

The version I've heard from a UK member of staff for Menzies, the ground handling agent, is that it was indeed weight / balance issue when the ground handlers in Montréal were unable / unwilling to offload cargo or baggage immediately. Given the ticking clock, the captain had to remove a certain weight quickly, and passengers were selected instead of baggage. Somehow this got communicated to ground staff as passengers were disruptive as opposed to disrupted (language issue?) and the police were called to assist. It wouldn't surprise me if the police and ground staff weren't fully informed either, that seems to be the over-riding issue here, very poor communications, and the ground staff at YUL filled in the gaps with the usual reason people are offloaded without notice. Plus the rather awkward issue about baggage handling. I guess I should point out that this is inevitably a third hand account, so I'm not 100% sure about this.

It kind of stands to reason, in that while you may get one or two people with mask issues who get into a wrangle with cabin crew, you may get at a pinch a problem with a larger group of travellers (see Lufthansa's recent mega clanger), realistically you are not going to get 10 - 20 different and unrelated travellers or groups of travellers all in trouble within a relatively short period with the limited number of crew on this aircraft. What is more likely is that all the passengers did not have status on the manifest and did not have on-carriage arrangements, which would have been messy to resolve, they just needed 30 bodies. There may have been a requirement to take people from certain parts of the aircraft. The lack of staff at Montréal meant that a friendly and helpful rebooking service was not provided, and I am guessing the word was out that they were disruptive. It's common practice to avoid an argument with offloaded passengers while sat with other passengers, whatever the reason, so the usual protocol is to say "we can discuss this outside the aircraft but the captain has told me that you are not flying, and I don't have any more information right now".

The London ground handlers found a few unattended bags in the cabin in London after disembarkation, in addition to the unclaimed bags, which caused a security event at the London end for which the Metropolitan Police were called.