Wizz Air has sold more tickets than seats for an Oslo-Bucharest flight

Last week, a Wizz Air flight from Oslo to Bucharest was overbooked, and the tickets were sold and all passengers showed up for boarding. Because at least one of the passengers who woke up on the plane, standing, refused to get off, the police intervened, and takeoff was delayed for several hours.

Wizz Air flight W4 3216 was supposed to depart from Oslo’s Sandefjord Torp Airport to Bucharest on Thursday evening at 20:55, but due to the situation it took off only after midnight, according to simpleflying.com.

Although it is not unusual for an airline to allow more bookings than available seats, because passengers often change their minds and actually end up not buying the tickets, in this case tickets were actually sold in plus, three to be exact, as the quoted source states. Unfortunately, no one realized the error in time.

This is how all the ticketed passengers boarded the plane, and three found themselves standing. Two of them agreed to disembark and fly another flight after two days, during which time the accommodation was provided by the company. But the third passenger, a 60-year-old man, refused to get off, so there was a scandal. At the same time, other passengers offered to disembark, but they asked to be financially compensated for it, and the company did not agree.

The situation got out of control at some point and all the passengers got involved in the scandal. Some of them directed their anger at the 60-year-old man, while others at the company’s employees. Thus, the intervention of the police was requested, who evacuated the 60-year-old man. It is not clear if and how it arrived in Romania. Because of this incident, the plane took off with a delay of almost 4 hours, at 00:33 and landed in Otopeni at 03:54. Fortunately, the delay did not affect the next flight of the aircraft.

BucharestflightoslootopenioverbookedpassengersSandefjord Torp Airportseatsticketswizz air
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  • Panagiotis Spyridis

    All airlines have the right and do overbooking according to IATA regulations. 5% seating can be double booked. Why was this a surprise?